author
Jack Thorne
b. 1863
A Black American novelist and journalist writing around the turn of the twentieth century, he used the pen name Jack Thorne to tell stories about racial injustice and Black life in the post-Reconstruction South. His work blends fiction, reporting, and sharp social criticism.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in North Carolina in 1863, David Bryant Fulton grew up in Wilmington and became a writer, journalist, and outspoken polemicist. He often published under the pseudonym Jack Thorne, the name attached to some of his best-known books.
Fulton wrote about the experiences, struggles, and ambitions of African Americans at a time when Black voices were often excluded from mainstream publishing. His novel Hanover; or, The Persecution of the Lowly is especially remembered for its treatment of racial violence in Wilmington, North Carolina, and for preserving a Black perspective on that era.
He later lived in New York, where he also worked as a Pullman porter. Today, Jack Thorne is remembered as an important early African American author whose writing joined storytelling with political witness.