Albion W. Tourgée
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Albion Winegar Tourgée (born May 2, 1838, in Williamsfield, Ohio; died May 21, 1905 in Bordeaux, France) was an American Radical Republican, lawyer, judge, and novelist. A pioneer civil rights activist in the late nineteenth century, he founded a national civil rights organization (The National Citizens' Rights Association), and litigated for the plaintiff Homer Plessy in the famous segregation case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Historian Mark Elliott credits Tourgee with introducing the metaphor of "color-blind" justice into legal discourse.
Tourgée served in the Civil War, being wounded at Bull Run and Perryville and being held in Libby Prison for six months. After the war he settled as a lawyer, farmer, and editor in Greensboro, North Carolina.
He was an active participant in Reconstruction as a Carpetbagger in North Carolina, about which he wrote the novel A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools. In 1868 he represented Guilford County at the state constitutional convention. He successfully advocated equal political and civil rights for all citizens; ending property qualifications for jury duty and officeholding; popular election of all state officers, including judges; free public education; abolition of whipping posts for those convicted of crimes; judicial reform; and uniform taxation. He was an active Republican, serving as a superior court judge from 1868 to 1874, where he confronted the violent Ku Klux Klan, which was very powerful in his district and repeatedly threatened his life. He was a delegate to the 1875 constitutional convention, and was defeated in a race for Congress in 1878. Success came with A Fool's Errand, (1879) which sold 200,000 copies. Its sequel, "Bricks Without Straw" (1880) was also a best-seller.
In 1881 he moved to Philadelphia, making a living as a writer and editor of a literary weekly, "Our Continent." The magazine failed in 1884. He wrote many more books and essays in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1897, President William McKinley appointed him U.S. consul in Bordeaux, France. He held this post until his death in Bordeaux. Tourgée died of acute uremia, the result of a Civil War wound. He became seriously ill some months before his death. His condition then improved, but took another serious turn for the worse before he died.
[edit] References
- Mark Elliott, "Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson" (2006). An award-winning biography of Tourgee
- Curtis, Michael Kent (2000). Tourgée in the American National Biography.
- Otto Olsen, Carpetbagger's Crusade: The Life of Albion Winegar Tourgee (1965)
- Roy F. Dibble, Albion W. Tourgee (1921)
- J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Reconstruction in North Carolina (1914)
- "Albion W. Tourgee Dead.", The New York Times, May 22, 1905, p. 7.
