{"product_id":"the-writings-of-thomas-smallwood-by-thomas-smallwood-9780143138389","title":"The Writings of Thomas Smallwood","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA long-forgotten Black abolitionist who liberated captive workers by the wagonload, brilliantly satirised slaveholders, and gave the underground railroad its name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThomas 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 published newspaper dispatches ridiculing and excoriating enslavers by name and offering sobering reflections on the depravity of slavery. With the pen that Smallwood called his \"lash,\" he leveraged mockery to flip the oppressive racial power structure of America.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese dispatches, in which Smallwood was the first to use \u003cem\u003eunderground railroad\u003c\/em\u003e in print, are the only accounts of escapes to be published in real time, imbuing Smallwood's subversive wit with urgency and defiance. His 1851 memoir is prescient on the United States' tormented entanglement with race.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471853568236,"sku":"9780143138389","price":38.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780143138389-the-writings-of-thomas-smallwood.jpg?v=1775260053","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/the-writings-of-thomas-smallwood-by-thomas-smallwood-9780143138389","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}