John Jasper is a partial biography of the popular Baptist preacher of Richmond, Virginia. Jasper lived as a slave for fifty years before Emancipation. At the age of twenty-five, Jasper was working in a tobacco factory when he was converted to Christianity. He preached for twenty-five years as a slave, and continued preaching as a free man until his death at age eighty-nine. While still a slave, Jasper's funeral sermons brought him renown among black as well as whites. In freedom Jasper fostered a congregation that reached several thousand, and he built the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church to house them.

Hatcher presents (in dialect) several of Jasper's sermons, including "Whar sin kum frum?," "Dem sebun wimmin," and "The sun do move." This last sermon expressed Jasper's belief in a stationary Earth and a moving sun. This belief brought him both notoriety and fame. Hatcher describes the crowds and excitement that surrounded Jasper when he preached on this subject. Hatcher argues that despite Jasper's mistaken beliefs, his preaching is both heartfelt and powerful.

William Hatcher (1834-1912) was a white Virginian and Baptist minister who was involved with Baptist periodicals and Baptist education. John Jasper is his second of three books, and it is his attempt to pay "tribute to the brother in black,--the one unmatched, unapproachable, and wonderful brother."

Andrew Leiter