Many Thousand Gone: An American Fable

by Ronald L. Fair

Genres: General Fiction; African American; Literary Fiction; Alternative History sci-fi

Synopsis

Rediscover this gripping 1965 novel about race in America—set in a rural corner of Mississippi where slavery never ended

From the Civil Rights Era comes an urgent allegory about the terror and tragedy of Jim Crow, with a new introduction by W. Ralph Eubanks

The premise of Ronald Fair’s short, parable-like novel, Many Thousand Gone: An American Fable (1965), is that in a rural corner of Mississippi—the fictional Jacobs County—slavery did not end in 1865 but continued uninterrupted into the 1960s through the brutal tactics of the local sheriff's office and the willing complicity of surrounding counties. Black outsiders are not allowed into Jacobs County while Black inhabitants attempting to escape are hunted down and killed. All the Black women in the county have been made sexually available to any white man for generations, resulting in the mixed blood of nearly all the enslaved population.  

When the last all-Black child, “the Black Prince,” is born, he is secreted out of the county by his great-grandmother and a family friend, and eventually makes his way north to join his father. Years later, when the Black Prince becomes a celebrated writer in Chicago, his growing fame puts an unwanted spotlight on Jacobs County, emboldening the enslaved population, exposing the white supremacists’ false sense of superiority, and setting in motion a series of events that will change everything. Will the white population change with the times? Or will they willingly see the destruction of Jacobsville—the county’s principal town—before sharing power with the Black population? 

An introduction by W. Ralph Eubanks explores Fair’s extended metaphor for Black life under Jim Crow and reflects on the power of literature to illuminate the past.

Release date: November 21, 2023

Publisher: Library of America

Print pages: 125

Sample

The Civil War years were hard on Jacobs County. The land 
had been without cotton too long, a great many of the slaves 
were gone, and those who remained thought that they were 
free. Mr. Jacobs returned home from the war, and with the aid 
of his only son, Sam, immediately set about putting things in 
order. 


He worked closely with the Yankee officers, and succeeded 
in isolating Jacobs County from the rest of the world by 
donating enough land to the state so that all roads in the area, 
except one well-hidden dirt road, could be detoured around 
it. By the time the reconstruction period ended, the Negroes 
who held fast to the land found themselves slaves again, 
unable to flee Mr. Jacobs and his army of fifty guards who 
patroled the county line day and night. 


Occasionally Negroes were able to slip past the sentries, but 
someone would always tell of the escape and the guards would 
pursue them, even into neighboring states, until they were 
apprehended. The residents of Mississippi delighted in seeing 
the white-shirted guards returning from a successful hunt, 
the limp body of a Negro dragging behind a horse. To them 
Jacobs County was the south as it should have remained, and 
they kept the secret well.