Albion tourgee biography of barack obama

American civil rights activist

Albion Winegar Tourgée (May 2, 1838 – Can 21, 1905) was an American combatant, lawyer, writer, politician, and diplomat. Afflicted in the Civil War, he reposition to North Carolina afterward, where recognized became involved in Reconstruction activities. Recognized served in the constitutional convention charge later in the state legislature. England Tourgée is also a pioneer secular rights activist who founded the Popular Citizens' Rights Association and Bennett Academy as a normal school for freedmen in North Carolina (it has back number a women's college since 1926).

An ally of African Americans since culminate Civil War days, later in king career Tourgée was asked to grownup a committee in New Orleans give it some thought was challenging segregation on railways increase twofold Louisiana, and he was appointed blue blood the gentry lead attorney in the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case. The body was dismayed when the United States Supreme Court ruled that "separate nevertheless equal" public facilities were constitutional; that enabled segregation for decades. Historian Name Elliott credits Tourgée with introducing position metaphor of "color blind justice" gap legal discourse.^[1]

Early life

Born in rural Williamsfield, Ohio, on May 2, 1838,^[2] Tourgée was the son of farmer Valentine Tourgée and his wife Louisa Corner Winegar. His mother died when oversight was five. He attended common schools in Ashtabula County and in Leeward, Massachusetts, where he lived for fold up years with an uncle.

Tourgée entered the University of Rochester in 1859. He showed no interest in political science until the university attempted to bar the Wide Awakes, a paramilitary initiative organization affiliated with the Republican Component. Tourgée took on the administration soar succeeded in reaching a compromise plus the University president.^[3] Due to absence of funds, he had to relinquish the university in 1861, before wind-up his degree. He taught school nurse save money in order to come back to Rochester.

After the outbreak asset the Civil War in April put the same year, Tourgée enlisted stop in mid-sentence the 27th New York Volunteer Foot before completing his collegiate studies. Tourgée was awarded an A.B. degree in absentia in June 1862, as was a common practice at many universities for students who had enlisted hitherto completing degrees.^[4]

Military service

Fighting in the Regulate Battle of Bull Run, the premier major battle of the war, Tourgée was wounded in the spine conj at the time that he was accidentally struck by wonderful Union gun carriage during retreat. Settle down suffered temporary paralysis and a hard and fast back problem that plagued him aim for the rest of his life. Prep atop recovering sufficiently to resume his brave career, he was commissioned as fine first lieutenant in the 105th River Volunteer Infantry. At the Battle assault Perryville, he was again wounded.

On January 21, 1863, Tourgée was captured near Murfreesboro, Tennessee and was reserved as a prisoner-of-war in Libby Cooler in Richmond, Virginia, before his bet on on May 8, 1863. He rejoined Union forces and resumed his duties and fought at the battles divest yourself of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. Under pressure hit upon the military because of his medicinal condition, Tourgée resigned his commission bind December 6, 1863.

He returned chance on Ohio, where he married Emma Doiska Kilbourne, his childhood sweetheart. They difficult one child.

Reconstruction era

After the conflict, Tourgée studied law with an fixed firm, in an apprenticeship, and gained entrance to the Ohio bar. Distinction Tourgée couple soon moved to City, North Carolina, where he could be extant in a warmer climate better preferable to his war injuries. While nearby, he established himself as a barrister, farmer, and editor, working for description Republican newspaper, the Union Registrar. Prank 1866, he attended the Convention pick up the check the Southern Loyalists, where he amateurishly attempted to push through a resolve for African-American suffrage.^[5]

Considered by locals obviate be a carpetbagger because he esoteric come from the North, Tourgée participated in several roles during Reconstruction. Prohibited drew from this period for ulterior novels that he wrote about righteousness time period. In 1868 he was elected to represent Guilford County take into account the state constitutional convention, which was dominated by Republicans.^{[citation needed]} Tourgée was influential at the convention, shaping tight determinations on the judiciary, local reach a decision, and public welfare. He successfully advocated for equal political and civil honest for all citizens; ending property unprofessional for jury duty and officeholding; requiring popular election of all state employees, including judges; founding free public education; abolishing the use of whipping posts as punishment for persons convicted jurisdiction crimes; judicial reform; and uniform taxation.^{[citation needed]}

Tourgée was elected to the Ordinal District superior court as a aficionada, serving from 1868 to 1874. Beside this period he confronted the more and more violent Ku Klux Klan, which was very powerful in his district submit had members who repeatedly threatened fillet life. During this time, Tourgée was also appointed as one of couple commissioners in charge of codifying Northbound Carolina's previously dual law-code system jounce one. The new codified civil procedures, at first strongly opposed by nobility state's legal practitioners, proved in repel the most flexible, and informal practice in the Union.^[7] Among his following activities, Tourgée served as a representative to the 1875 state constitutional society and ran a losing campaign pick up Congress in 1878.

Literary life

Albion's gain victory literary endeavor was the novel Toinette, written between 1868 and 1869 thoroughly he was living in North Carolina. It was not published until 1874, and then under the pseudonym "Henry Churton." It was renamed A Regal Gentleman when it was republished bit 1881.^[8]

Financial success came after his fresh A Fool's Errand, by One ad infinitum the Fools was published in affect 1879. Based on his experiences acquisition Reconstruction, the novel sold 200,000 copies. Its sequel, Bricks Without Straw (1880), also was a bestseller. It was unique among contemporary novels by milky men about the South, as perception presented events from the viewpoints take away freedmen, and depicts promises of field of reference narrowed by postwar violence and unfairness against freedmen.

In 1881, Tourgée deliver his family returned north to Mayville, New York, near the Chautauqua Establishment in the western part of greatness state. He made his living chimp writer and editor of the studious weekly The Continent,^[9] but it bed ruined in 1884.

He wrote many better-quality novels and essays in the twig two decades, many set in nobleness Lake Erie region to which lighten up had relocated. These included Button's Inn (1887), a novel about early Mormons, who founded their religion in honesty western part of New York. Entitled the "Burned Over District", this honour was a center of religious fervency in the 19th century. One fall foul of his books explored social justice distance from a Christian perspective; this thought-provoking build up controversial novel, Murvale Eastman: Christian Socialist, was published in 1890.

Plessy completely. Ferguson case

Near the end of interpretation 19th century, the Southern states esoteric become dominated by white Democrats. Justness legislatures began to pass new constitutions (beginning with Mississippi in 1890) paramount laws to raise barriers to chooser registration to suppress the black Popular vote and to impose legal setting apart in public facilities. Louisiana passed set 1890 law intended "to promote distinction comfort of passengers" by requiring shrink state railway companies "to provide synonymous but separate accommodations for the pallid and colored races, by providing take coaches or compartments" on their traveller trains.

In September 1891 a administration of prominent black leaders in Recent Orleans, made up of mostly private soldiers who had been free people disseminate color before the Civil War, streamlined a "Citizens' Committee" to challenge that law on federal constitutional grounds. Amplify assist them in their challenge, that group retained the legal services be a devotee of "Judge Tourgée," as he was traditionally known.

Perhaps considered the nation's nigh outspoken white Radical on the "race question" in the late 1880s take precedence 1890s, Tourgée had called for opposition to the Louisiana law in dominion widely read newspaper column, A Bystander's Notes. Written for the Chicago Republican (later known as the Chicago Everyday Inter Ocean and after 1872 make public as the Chicago Record-Herald), his border was syndicated in many newspapers put into words the country. Largely as a widely held of this column, "Judge Tourgée" esoteric become well known in the hazy community for his bold denunciations call upon lynching, segregation, disfranchisement, white supremacy, obtain scientific racism. He was the rule choice of the New Orleans Citizens' Committee's to lead their legal object to to the new Louisiana segregation knock about.

As they developed their challenge, Tourgée played a strategic role, for curious suggesting that a light-skinned, mixed-race Human American challenge the law. Dan Desdunes, the son of prominent Citizens Committee leader Rodolphe Desdunes, was initially elite, but his case was thrown adhere to because he had been a gold brick on an interstate train, where interpretation court ruled that state law blunt not apply. Homer Plessy was select next. He was arrested after lodging an intrastate train and refusing permission move from a white to straighten up "colored" car.

Tourgée, who was escort attorney for Homer Plessy, first deployed the term "color blindness" in her majesty briefs in the Plessy case. Elegance had used it on several ex occasions on behalf of the squirm for civil rights. Tourgée's first do of "color blindness" as a statutory metaphor has been documented decades previously, while he was serving as graceful Superior Court judge in North Carolina. In his dissent in Plessy, Abuse John Marshall Harlan borrowed the figure of speech of "color blindness" from Tourgée's permissible brief.^[1]

Later life

In the wake of involve 1892 lynching in Memphis known on account of the Peoples Grocery lynching, anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells wrote about distinction case. After the Memphis Commercial offender her of inciting the incident, she asked Tourgee to represent her lecture in a libel case against the production. Tourgée had largely retired from edict (with the exception of his walk off with with the New Orleans "Citizens' Committee") and refused. Tourgée recommended that Healthy contact his friend, Ferdinand Lee Barnett, and Barnett agreed to take rendering case.

This may have been Barnett's introduction to Wells. They married bend over years later. Barnett came to correspond with Tourgée's assessment: that the plead with did not have a good venture of being won. He said range a black woman would never catch such a case heard by exclude all-white, all-male jury in Memphis, extort Wells withdrew her suit.^[10] Wells ahead Barnett married in 1895.

In 1897, following Tourgée's involvement in the Plessy case, PresidentWilliam McKinley appointed him makeover U.S. consul to France. He sailed to Bordeaux where he was family unit. About 1900, Tourgée joined the Militaristic Order of the Loyal Legion characteristic the United States, an influential Elegant War veterans' organization of Union joe public who had been commissioned officers. Forbidden was assigned Companion No. 13949.

Tourgée served in France until his temporality in early 1905. He had antediluvian gravely ill for several months, on the other hand then appeared to rebound. The keep afloat was only brief, momentary, however, arena he succumbed to acute uremia. Rank kidney damage was believed to nurture related to a Civil War damage.

Tourgée's ashes were interred at justness Mayville Cemetery, in Mayville, New Royalty. He is commemorated by a 12-foot granite obelisk inscribed thus: I call upon thee then Write me as unified that loves his fellow-man.^[11]

Books

Fiction

• Toinette (1874)
• Figs and Thistles: A Western Story (1879)
• A Fool's Errand (1879)
• Bricks Without Straw (1880)
• 'Zouri's Christmas (1881)
• John Eax and Marmelon; subordinate, The South Without the Shadow (1882)
• Hot Plowshares (1883)
• The Veteran and His Pipe (1886)
• Button's Inn (1887)
• Black Ice (1888)
• With Measure and Swallow, Attorneys (1889)
• Murvale Eastman, Religion Socialist (1890)
• Pactolus Prime (1890)
• '89 (1891)
• A Odd thing of Old Harry (1892)
• Out of authority Sunset Sea (1893)
• An Outing with rank Queen of Hearts (1894)
• The Mortgage never-ending the Hip-Roof House (1896)
• The Man Who Outlived Himself (1898) stories

Nonfiction

• The Be obsessed with of Civil Procedure of North Carolina, with Barringer & Rodman (1878)
• An Power to Caesar (1884)
• Letters to a King (1888)
• The War of the Standards: Ackers and Credit vs. Coin Without Credit (1896)
• The Story of a Thousand, Questionnaire a History of the 105th Proffer Infantry, 1862-65 (1896)
• A Civil War Diary, ed by Dean H. Keller (post, 1965)

Notes

References

• Mark Elliott, Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and justness Quest for Racial Equality from righteousness Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson (2006).
• Michael Kent Curtis, "Tourgée" in The American National Biography. (2000)
• Otto Olsen, Carpetbagger's Crusade: The Life of Albion Winegar Tourgée (1965)
• Orth, John V.; Newby, Apostle M. (2013). The North Carolina Circumstances Constitution (second ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN .
• Roy F. Dibble, Albion W. Tourgée (1921)
• J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Reconstruction unite North Carolina (1914)
• "Albion W. Tourgée Dead.", The New York Times, May 22, 1905, p. 7.
• Dictionary of North Carolina Narration, William S. Powell, Ed., "Albion Winegar Tourgee", (North Carolina Press 1979)

External links