A Fool's Errand


Book Description

There had been rumors in the air, for some months, of a strangely mysterious organization, said to be spreading over the Southern States, which added to the usual intangibility of the secret society an element of the grotesque superstition unmatched in the history of any other.... Here and there throughout the South, by a sort of sporadic instinct, bands of ghostly horsemen, in quaint and horrible guise, appeared, and admonished the lazy and trifling of the African race...-from "Chapter XXVII: A New Institution"Subtitled "A Novel of the South During Reconstruction," this 1879 bestseller, by a participant in that great social experiment, is the barely fictionalized account of the career of a Northern lawyer in North Carolina after the Civil War. A champion of the poor and landless of any race, and a keen observer of the dilemmas facing uneducated Negroes in the postwar period, Tourg e offers us an important eyewitness account of one of the most tumultuous eras of American history, one that continues to influence the course of the American experiences of race and class to this day.American abolitionist and lawyer ALBION W. TOURG E (1838-1905) also wrote Figs and Thistles (1879).







A Fool's Errand


Book Description







A Fool's Errand


Book Description

There had been rumors in the air, for some months, of a strangely mysterious organization, said to be spreading over the Southern States, which added to the usual intangibility of the secret society an element of the grotesque superstition unmatched in the history of any other.... Here and there throughout the South, by a sort of sporadic instinct, bands of ghostly horsemen, in quaint and horrible guise, appeared, and admonished the lazy and trifling of the African race... -from "Chapter XXVII: A New Institution" Subtitled "A Novel of the South During Reconstruction," this 1879 bestseller, by a participant in that great social experiment, is the barely fictionalized account of the career of a Northern lawyer in North Carolina after the Civil War. A champion of the poor and landless of any race, and a keen observer of the dilemmas facing uneducated Negroes in the postwar period, Tourgée offers us an important eyewitness account of one of the most tumultuous eras of American history, one that continues to influence the course of the American experiences of race and class to this day.




Bricks Without Straw


Book Description

Dar! 'Liab, he said, as he entered and handed the paper which he had been examining to the person addressed, "I reckon I'se free now. I feel ez ef I wuz 'bout half free, ennyhow. I wuz a sojer, an' fought fer freedom. I've got my house an' bit o' lan', wife, chillen, crap, an' stock, an' it's all mine. An' now I'se done been registered, an' when de 'lection comes off, kin vote jes' ez hard an' ez well an' ez often ez ole Marse Desmit. I hain't felt free afore--leastways I hain't felt right certain on't; but now I reckon I'se all right, fact an' truth. What you tinks on't, 'Liab?"







Separate


Book Description

A New York Times Editors' Choice A myth-shattering narrative of how a nation embraced "separation" and its pernicious consequences. Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with “separate but equal,” created remarkably little stir when the justices announced their near-unanimous decision on May 18, 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the nineteenth century, whose outcome embraced and protected segregation, and whose reverberations are still felt into the twenty-first. Separate spans a striking range of characters and landscapes, bound together by the defining issue of their time and ours—race and equality. Wending its way through a half-century of American history, the narrative begins at the dawn of the railroad age, in the North, home to the nation’s first separate railroad car, then moves briskly through slavery and the Civil War to Reconstruction and its aftermath, as separation took root in nearly every aspect of American life. Award-winning author Steve Luxenberg draws from letters, diaries, and archival collections to tell the story of Plessy v. Ferguson through the eyes of the people caught up in the case. Separate depicts indelible figures such as the resisters from the mixed-race community of French New Orleans, led by Louis Martinet, a lawyer and crusading newspaper editor; Homer Plessy’s lawyer, Albion Tourgée, a best-selling author and the country’s best-known white advocate for civil rights; Justice Henry Billings Brown, from antislavery New England, whose majority ruling endorsed separation; and Justice John Harlan, the Southerner from a slaveholding family whose singular dissent cemented his reputation as a steadfast voice for justice. Sweeping, swiftly paced, and richly detailed, Separate provides a fresh and urgently-needed exploration of our nation’s most devastating divide.




Black and White


Book Description

In discussing the political and industrial problems of the South, I base my conclusions upon a personal knowledge of the condition of classes in the South, as well as upon the ample data furnished by writers who have pursued, in their way, the question before me. That the colored people of the country will yet achieve an honorable status in the national industries of thought and activity, I believe, and try to make plain. In discussion of the land and labor problem I but pursue the theories advocated by more able and experienced men, in the attempt to show that the laboring classes of any country pay all the taxes, in the last analysis, and that they are systematically victimized by legislators, corporations and syndicates.