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Many Thousand Gone: An American Fable

Author Ronald L. Fair
Introduction by W. Ralph Eubanks
Paperback
$15.95 US
The Library of America | Library of America
5.26"W x 7.99"H x 0.4"D  
On sale Nov 07, 2023 | 125 Pages | 9781598537635
Grades 9-12
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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.
Ronald Fair was born in Chicago in 1932, spent three years as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy and after his military service attended the Stenotype School of Chicago. For twelve years he worked as a court reporter. His writing appeared in the Chicago Daily Defender and the Chat Noir Review before the appearance of his critically acclaimed first novel, Many Thousand Gone: An American Fable (1965). Fair published a half dozen books in his career, including the novels Hog Butcher (1966), World of Nothing (1970), and We Can’t Breathe (1972) as well as a collection of poetry. Hog Butcher was adapted to the screen as Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975), starring Rosalind Cash and Laurence Fishburne. Increasingly disenchanted with American politics and culture, Fair left the United States for Finland in 1971, where he became a sculptor. He died in 2018. 

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of A Place Like Mississippi, Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi’s Dark Past, and The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South. From 1995 to 2013 he was the Director of Publishing of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and he is the former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review.  Currently he is the faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.
Ronald L. Fair View titles by Ronald L. Fair
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.
Copyright © 2023 by The Estate of Ronald L. Fair. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About

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.

Author

Ronald Fair was born in Chicago in 1932, spent three years as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Navy and after his military service attended the Stenotype School of Chicago. For twelve years he worked as a court reporter. His writing appeared in the Chicago Daily Defender and the Chat Noir Review before the appearance of his critically acclaimed first novel, Many Thousand Gone: An American Fable (1965). Fair published a half dozen books in his career, including the novels Hog Butcher (1966), World of Nothing (1970), and We Can’t Breathe (1972) as well as a collection of poetry. Hog Butcher was adapted to the screen as Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975), starring Rosalind Cash and Laurence Fishburne. Increasingly disenchanted with American politics and culture, Fair left the United States for Finland in 1971, where he became a sculptor. He died in 2018. 

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of A Place Like Mississippi, Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi’s Dark Past, and The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South. From 1995 to 2013 he was the Director of Publishing of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and he is the former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review.  Currently he is the faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.
Ronald L. Fair View titles by Ronald L. Fair

Excerpt

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.
Copyright © 2023 by The Estate of Ronald L. Fair. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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