Rediscovering Resistance: John Swanson Jacobs and 600,000 Despots

In 1855, an American named John Swanson Jacobs walked into the offices of the Empire newspaper in Sydney, Australia. The conversation that ensued between the editors and Jacobs, a fugitive slave, opened a path for both Jacobs and the Empire, a path for the newspaper to publish his story. Two weeks later, Jacobs brought them a manuscript titled The United States Governed by 600,000 Despots. This was not a typical slave narrative, and they published it.\r\n\r\nIn 2016, in the midst of other research, historian Jonathan D.S. Schroeder came across Jacobs\' autobiography, which had been all but lost to time. An extraordinary work, more sociopolitical critique than life story, Despots offers a first hand account of how the enslaved truly viewed the institution of slavery, unmediated by white editors and writers as so many other slave narratives of the time were.\r\n\r\nIn celebration of the 90th Anisfield Wolf Book Awards and Cleveland Book Fest, Schroeder will discuss Jacobs\' narrative and Schroeder\'s own scholarship with author, historian, and 2021 Anisfield Wolf Book Award winner Vincent Brown.