Thomas Smallwood

A long-forgotten Black abolitionist who liberated captive workers by the wagonload, brilliantly satirised slaveholders, and gave the underground railroad its name. Thomas Smallwood was a shoemaker by day and an organiser of mass escapes from slavery by night. Twelve years after purchasing his freedom from slavery, Smallwood took to the press and, over a 16-month stretch starting in 1842, pseudonymously...