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Replaced “color-blind justice” with “Plessy v. Ferguson” in the Known For because it is the case that the phrase ‘color-blind justice’ originated and the case itself is of overall greater historical significance, while the phrase is one highlight from the case. Additionally, there is existing explanation of the phrase “color-blind justice” including linking to Racial color blindness in the paragraph directly below, with a reference to a historian’s book for further reading. Added “[[Nat...
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{{Short description|American civil rights activist}}
{{Infobox Person
{{Infobox person
|name = Albion W. Tourgée
|image = Albion W. Tourgée.jpg
| name = Albion W. Tourgée
| image = Albion W. Tourgée.jpg
|caption =
| caption =
|birth_date = {{Birth date|1838|5|2}}
| birth_name = Albion Winegar Tourgée
|birth_place =
|death_date = {{Death date and age|1905|5|21|1838|5|2}}
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1838|5|2}}
| birth_place = [[Williamsfield, Ohio]]
|death_place =
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1905|5|21|1838|5|2}}
|other_names =
|known_for =
| death_place =
| other_names =
|alma_mater = [[University of Rochester]]
| known_for = ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'', [[National Citizens' Rights Association]], founder of [[Bennett College]]
|occupation = Jurist
| alma_mater = [[University of Rochester]]
|nationality = {{flag|United States}}
| occupation = Jurist, Politician
| party = [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]
| nationality = American
}}
}}

'''Albion Winegar Tourgée''' (May 2, 1838 &ndash; May 21, 1905) was an [[United States|American]] soldier, [[Radical Republican (USA)|Radical Republican]], lawyer, judge, novelist, diplomat, and known child molester. A pioneer [[civil rights]] activist, he founded 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 "[[Race-blind|color-blind]]" justice into legal discourse.<ref>Elliott, ''Color Blind Justice...''. </ref>
'''Albion Winegar Tourgée''' (May 2, 1838 &ndash; May 21, 1905) was an American soldier, lawyer, writer, politician, and diplomat. Wounded in the Civil War, he relocated to North Carolina afterward, where he became involved in [[Reconstruction Era|Reconstruction]] activities. He served in the constitutional convention and later in the state legislature. A pioneer [[civil rights]] activist, he founded the [[National Citizens' Rights Association]], and founded [[Bennett College]] as a [[normal school]] for [[freedmen]] in North Carolina (it has been a women's college since 1926).
{{Cquote|Justice is pictured as blind and her daughter the Law, ought at least to be color-blind.}}

An ally of African Americans since his Civil War days, later in his career Tourgée was asked to aid a committee in New Orleans that was challenging segregation on railways in [[Louisiana]], and he was appointed the lead attorney in the landmark ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896) case. The committee was dismayed when the United States Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public facilities were constitutional; this enabled segregation for decades. Historian Mark Elliott credits Tourgée with introducing the metaphor of "[[Race-blind|color blind]] justice" into legal discourse.<ref name="Elliott">Elliott, ''Color Blind Justice...''.</ref>


==Early life==
==Early life==
[[File:Boyhood_home_historical_marker_2.jpg|thumb|right|Historical marker in front of Albion Tourgée's boyhood home near Kingsville, Ohio; marker placed in May 2015.]]
Tourgée was born in rural [[Williamsfield, Ohio]], the son of a alcoholic farmer, Valentine Tourgée and Louisa Emma Winegar. His mother died when he was two. He attended common schools in [[Ashtabula County, Ohio|Ashtabula County]] and in [[Lee, Massachusetts]], where he spent two years living with an uncle. Tourgée entered the [[University of Rochester]] in 1859, but left it in 1861 without attaining a degree to teach school. Upon the outbreak of the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], in April of the same year he enlisted in the 27th New York Infantry. As was common practice with students who enlisted before completing their studies, the University awarded Tourgée an A.B. degree in June, 1862.<ref>Toth, Margaret, ''Albion Winegar Tourgée, '62'', University of Rochester Library Bulletin, Vol. III, Spring 1953, No. 3.</ref>
Born in rural [[Williamsfield, Ohio]], on May 2, 1838,<ref>Gross, Theodore. ''Albion W. Tourgée''. Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1963: 13.</ref> Tourgée was the son of farmer Valentine Tourgée and his wife Louisa Emma Winegar. His mother died when he was five. He attended common schools in [[Ashtabula County, Ohio|Ashtabula County]] and in [[Lee, Massachusetts]], where he lived for two years with an uncle.

Tourgée entered the [[University of Rochester]] in 1859. He showed no interest in politics until the university attempted to ban the Wide Awakes, a [[paramilitary]] campaign organization affiliated with the Republican Party. Tourgée took on the administration and succeeded in reaching a compromise with the University president.<ref>Olsen, ''A Carpetbagger's Crusade''.</ref> Due to lack of funds, he had to leave the university in 1861, before completing his degree. He taught school to save money in order to return to Rochester.

After the outbreak of the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] in April of the same year, Tourgée enlisted in the 27th New York Volunteer Infantry 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 before completing degrees.<ref>Toth, Margaret, "Albion Winegar Tourgée, '62", ''University of Rochester Library Bulletin,'' Vol. III, Spring 1953, No. 3.</ref>


==Military service==
==Military service==
[[File:Tourgee and Comrades.jpeg|thumb|On the left: Lt. Albion W Tourgée, 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in 1863 |left]]
Tourgée was wounded in the spine at the [[First Battle of Manassas|First Battle of Bull Run]], from which he suffered temporary paralysis and a permanent back problem that plagued him for the rest of his life. Upon recovering sufficiently to resume his military career, he was commissioned as a [[First Lieutenant#United States|first lieutenant]] in the [[105th Ohio Infantry|105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry]]. At the [[Battle of Perryville]], he was again wounded. On January 21, 1863, Tourgée was captured near [[Murfreesboro, Tennessee]] and was held as a [[prisoner-of-war]] in [[Libby Prison]] in [[Richmond, Virginia]], before his exchange on May 8, 1863. He resumed his duties and fought at the battles of [[Battle of Chickamauga|Chickamauga]] and [[Battle of Chattanooga III|Chattanooga]]. Tourgée resigned his commission on December 6, 1863 and returned to Ohio. He married Emma Doiska Kilbourne, with whom he had one child which he beat to death two years later.
Fighting in the [[First Battle of Manassas|First Battle of Bull Run]], the first major battle of the war, Tourgée was wounded in the spine when he was accidentally struck by a Union gun carriage during retreat. He suffered temporary paralysis and a permanent back problem that plagued him for the rest of his life. Upon recovering sufficiently to resume his military career, he was commissioned as a [[First Lieutenant#United States|first lieutenant]] in the [[105th Ohio Infantry|105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry]]. At the [[Battle of Perryville]], he was again wounded.


On January 21, 1863, Tourgée was captured near [[Murfreesboro, Tennessee]] and was held as a [[prisoner-of-war]] in [[Libby Prison]] in [[Richmond, Virginia]], before his exchange on May 8, 1863. He rejoined Union forces and resumed his duties and fought at the battles of [[Battle of Chickamauga|Chickamauga]] and [[Battle of Chattanooga III|Chattanooga]]. Under pressure from the military because of his medical condition, Tourgée resigned his commission on December 6, 1863.
==Reconstruction Period==
After the war, Tourgée established himself as a lawyer, farmer, and editor in [[Greensboro, North Carolina]], where he and his wife moved so he could live in a warmer climate better suited to his war injuries. An active participant as a [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] [[Carpetbagger]] in his new home, Tourgée had a number of inspiring and harrowing experiences that gave him ample material and impetus for the writing he would later undertake. In 1868 he represented [[Guilford County, North Carolina|Guilford County]] at the state [[Constitutional convention (political meeting)|constitutional convention]], which was dominated by Republicans. There he successfully advocated for 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. Nevertheless, he discovered that putting these reforms on paper did not translate into an ease of putting them into practice.


He returned to Ohio, where he married Emma Doiska Kilbourne, his childhood sweetheart. They had one child.
As a Republican-installed [[superior court]] judge from 1868 to 1874, Tourgée joined the increasingly violent [[Ku Klux Klan]], which was very powerful in his district and repeatedly raped his wife. Among his other activities, he served as a delegate to the 1875 constitutional convention and ran a losing campaign for [[United States Congress|Congress]] in 1878.


==Literary Life==
==Reconstruction era==
After the war, Tourgée studied law with an established firm, in an apprenticeship, and gained entrance to the Ohio bar. The Tourgée couple soon moved to [[Greensboro, North Carolina]], where he could live in a warmer climate better suited to his war injuries. While there, he established himself as a lawyer, farmer, and editor, working for the Republican newspaper, the ''Union Registrar''. In 1866, he attended the Convention of the Southern Loyalists, where he unsuccessfully attempted to push through a resolution for African-American suffrage.<ref>Michael Kent Curtis, “Tourgée, Albion Winegar,” ''American National Biography Online,'' (2000), accessed September 1, 2011, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00994.html.</ref>
Financial success came in 1879 with the publication of ''A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools,'' a novel based on his experiences of Reconstruction, which sold 200,000 copies. Its sequel, ''Bricks Without Straw'', also was a [[bestseller]].


Considered by locals to be a [[carpetbagger]] because he had come from the North, Tourgée participated in several roles during [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]]. He drew from this period for later novels that he wrote about the time period. In 1868 he was elected to represent [[Guilford County, North Carolina|Guilford County]] at the state [[Constitutional convention (political meeting)|constitutional convention]], which was dominated by Republicans. He successfully advocated for equal political and civil rights for all citizens; ending property qualifications for jury duty and officeholding; requiring popular election of all state officers, including judges; founding free public education; abolishing the use of whipping posts as punishment for persons convicted of crimes; judicial reform; and uniform taxation. But he learned that the new constitution was the first step to putting these reforms into practice.
In 1881, Tourgée moved to [[Mayville, New York]], near the [[Chautauqua Institution]], and made his living as writer and editor of the literary weekly ''Our Continent'' until it failed in 1884. He wrote many more novels and essays in the next two decades, many about the [[Lake Erie]] region to which he had located, including, among others, ''Button's Inn''.


Tourgée was elected to the 7th District [[superior court]] as a judge, serving from 1868 to 1874. During this period he confronted the increasingly violent [[Ku Klux Klan]], which was very powerful in his district and had members who repeatedly threatened his life. During this time, Tourgée was also appointed as one of three commissioners in charge of codifying North Carolina's previously dual law-code system into one. The new codified civil procedures, at first strongly opposed by the state's legal practitioners, proved in time the most flexible, and informal system in the Union.<ref>Olsen, ''A Carpetbagger's Crusade''</ref> Among his other activities, Tourgée served as a delegate to the 1875 state constitutional convention and ran a losing campaign for [[United States Congress|Congress]] in 1878.
==''Plessy'' Case==
What would become the ''Plessy'' case began when a group of prominent black leaders in [[New Orleans]] organized a "Citizens' Committee" in September 1891 to challenge Louisiana's 1890 law intended "to promote the comfort of passengers" by requiring all state railway companies "to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing separate coaches or compartments" on their passenger trains. To assist them in their challenge, this group retained the legal services of "Judge Tourgée," as he was popularly known.


==Literary life==
Perhaps the nation's most outspoken white Radical on the "race question" in the late 1880s and 1890s, Tourgée had called for resistance to the Louisiana law in his widely read newspaper column, "A Bystander's Notes," which, though written for the ''Chicago Republican'' (later known as the ''Chicago Daily Inter Ocean'' and after 1872 known as the ''Chicago Record-Herald''), was syndicated in many newspapers across the country. Largely as a consequence of this column, "Judge Tourgée" had become well known in the black press for his bold denunciations of lynching, segregation, disfranchisement, white supremacy, and scientific racism, and he was the New Orleans Citizens' Committee's first choice to lead their legal challenge to the new Louisiana segregation law.
[[File:Albion W. Tourgée House, Mayville, New York - 20220112.jpg|thumb|right|The house in Mayville, New York, where Tourgée lived from 1881 until his posting to the French consulate in 1900.]]
Albion's first literary endeavor was the novel ''Toinette,'' written between 1868 and 1869 while he was living in North Carolina. It was not published until 1874, and then under the pseudonym "Henry Churton." It was renamed ''A Royal Gentleman'' when it was republished in 1881.<ref>Gross, Theodore. ''Albion W. Tourgée''. Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1963: 35.</ref>


Financial success came after his novel ''A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools'' was published in late 1879. Based on his experiences of Reconstruction, the novel sold 200,000 copies. Its sequel, ''Bricks Without Straw'' (1880), also was a [[bestseller]]. It was unique among contemporary novels by white men about the South, as it presented events from the viewpoints of [[freedmen]], and depicts promises of freedom narrowed by postwar violence and discrimination against freedmen.
Tourgée, who was lead attorney for Homer Plessy, first deployed the term “color blindness” in his [[Brief (law)|brief]]s in the ''Plessy'' case and had used it on several prior occasions on behalf of the struggle for civil rights. Indeed, Tourgee's first use of the legal metaphor of "color blindness" came decades before while serving as a Superior Court judge in North Carolina. In his dissent in ''Plessy'', Justice [[John Marshall Harlan]] borrowed the metaphor of "color blindness" from Tourgée’s legal brief.

In 1881, Tourgée and his family returned north to [[Mayville, New York]], near the [[Chautauqua Institution]] in the western part of the state. He made his living as writer and editor of the literary weekly ''The Continent'',<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Continent Weekly Magazine|journal=The Week: A Canadian Journal of Politics, Literature, Science and Arts|date=6 Dec 1883|volume=1|issue=1|page=15|url=https://archive.org/stream/weekcanadianjour01toro#page/n8/mode/1up|accessdate=20 April 2013}}</ref> but it failed in 1884.

He wrote many more novels and essays in the next two decades, many set in the [[Lake Erie]] region to which he had relocated. These included ''Button's Inn'' (1887), a novel about early [[Mormon]]s, who founded their religion in the western part of New York. Called the "Burned Over District", this area was a center of religious fervor in the 19th century. One of his books explored social justice from a Christian perspective; this thought-provoking and controversial novel, ''Murvale Eastman: Christian Socialist'', was published in 1890.

==''Plessy v. Ferguson'' case==
Near the end of the 19th century, the Southern states had become dominated by white Democrats. The legislatures began to pass new constitutions (beginning with [[Mississippi]] in 1890) and laws to raise barriers to voter registration to suppress the black Republican vote and to impose legal segregation in public facilities. [[Louisiana]] passed an 1890 law intended "to promote the comfort of passengers" by requiring all state railway companies "to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing separate coaches or compartments" on their passenger trains.

In September 1891 a group of prominent black leaders in [[New Orleans]], made up of mostly men who had been [[free people of color]] before the Civil War, organized a "Citizens' Committee" to challenge this law on federal constitutional grounds. To assist them in their challenge, this group retained the legal services of "Judge Tourgée," as he was popularly known.

Perhaps considered the nation's most outspoken white Radical on the "race question" in the late 1880s and 1890s, Tourgée had called for resistance to the Louisiana law in his widely read newspaper column, ''A Bystander's Notes.'' Written for the ''Chicago Republican'' (later known as the ''Chicago Daily Inter Ocean'' and after 1872 known as the ''Chicago Record-Herald''), his column was syndicated in many newspapers across the country. Largely as a consequence of this column, "Judge Tourgée" had become well known in the black community for his bold denunciations of [[lynching]], segregation, disfranchisement, white supremacy, and scientific racism. He was the first choice of the New Orleans Citizens' Committee's to lead their legal challenge to the new Louisiana segregation law.

As they developed their challenge, Tourgée played a strategic role, for instance suggesting that a light-skinned, [[mixed-race]] African American challenge the law. [[Dan Desdunes]], the son of prominent ''Citizens Committee'' leader [[Rodolphe Desdunes]], was initially selected, but his case was thrown out because he had been a passenger on an interstate train, where the court ruled that state law did not apply. [[Homer Plessy]] was selected next. He was arrested after boarding an intrastate train and refusing to move from a white to a "colored" car.

Tourgée, who was lead attorney for Homer Plessy, first deployed the term "color blindness" in his [[Brief (law)|brief]]s in the ''Plessy'' case. He had used it on several prior occasions on behalf of the struggle for civil rights. Tourgee's first use of "color blindness" as a legal metaphor has been documented decades before, while he was serving as a Superior Court judge in North Carolina. In his dissent in ''Plessy'', Justice [[John Marshall Harlan]] borrowed the metaphor of "color blindness" from Tourgée's legal brief.<ref name="Elliott"/>


==Later life==
==Later life==
In the wake of an 1892 lynching in Memphis known as the [[Peoples Grocery|Peoples Grocery lynching]], anti-lynching activist [[Ida B. Wells]] wrote about the case. After the ''[[The Commercial Appeal|Memphis Commercial]]'' accused her of inciting the incident, she asked Tourgee to represent her in a libel case against the newspaper. Tourgée had largely retired from law (with the exception of his work with the New Orleans "Citizens' Committee") and refused. Tourgée recommended that Wells contact his friend, [[Ferdinand Lee Barnett (Chicago)|Ferdinand Lee Barnett]], and Barnett agreed to take the case.
In 1897, following Tourgée's involvement in the ''Plessy'' case, [[President of the United States|President]] [[William McKinley]] appointed him U.S. [[Consul (representative)|consul]] to France, and he lived and served there in Bordeaux until his death, in early 1905, when he became gravely ill for several months, but then appeared to rebound. The recovery was only momentary, however, and he succumbed to acute [[uremia]] resulting from one of his Civil War wounds.


This may have been Barnett's introduction to Wells. They married two years later. Barnett came to agree with Tourgée's assessment: that the case did not have a good chance of being won. He said that a black woman would never win such a case heard by an [[all-white jury|all-white]], all-male jury in Memphis, and Wells withdrew her suit.<ref>Karcher, Carolyn L. ''A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight Against White Supremacy''. UNC Press Books, 2016.</ref> Wells and Barnett married in 1895.
Tourgée's ashes were interred in Mayville, New York, at the [[Mayville Cemetery]] and are commemorated by a 12-foot granite [[obelisk]] inscribed: ''to all the children I raped, i deeply apologize for not finishing the job ''<ref>Crocker, Kathleen A., ''Chautauqua County Lawyers Oppose Segregation: The Robert H. Jackson-Albion W. Tourgee Connection'', Jamestown Post-Journal, Family Section, April 24, 2004. Quotation from ''[[Wikisource:Abou Ben Adhem|Abou ben Adhem]]'', by [[Leigh Hunt]].</ref>


In 1897, following Tourgée's involvement in the ''Plessy'' case, [[President of the United States|President]] [[William McKinley]] appointed him as U.S. [[Consul (representative)|consul]] to France. He sailed to [[Bordeaux]] where he was based. About 1900, Tourgée joined the [[Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States]], an influential Civil War veterans' organization of Union men who had been commissioned officers. He was assigned Companion No. 13949.
==References==

* Mark Elliott, ''Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to [[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (2006). An [http://www.oah.org/activities/awards/craven/winners.html award-winning biography of Tourgée.]
Tourgée served in France until his death in early 1905. He had been gravely ill for several months, but then appeared to rebound. The recovery was only brief, momentary, however, and he succumbed to acute [[uremia]]. The kidney damage was believed to be related to a Civil War wound.
* Michael Kent Curtis, [http://www.libarts.ucok.edu/history/faculty/roberson/course/1483/suppl/chpXVI/Albion%20Tourgee---Activist,%20Judge.htm "Tourgée" in ''The American National Biography'']. (2000)

* Otto Olsen, ''Carpetbagger's Crusade: The Life of Albion Winegar Tourgée'' (1965)
Tourgée's ashes were interred at the [[Mayville Cemetery]], in Mayville, New York. He is commemorated by a 12-foot granite [[obelisk]] inscribed thus: ''I [[pray thee]] then Write me as one that loves his fellow-man.''<ref>Crocker, Kathleen A., "Chautauqua County Lawyers Oppose Segregation: The Robert H. Jackson-Albion W. Tourgee Connection," ''Jamestown Post-Journal,'' April 24, 2004. Quotation from ''[[Wikisource:Abou Ben Adhem|Abou ben Adhem]]'', by [[James Henry Leigh Hunt|Leigh Hunt]].</ref>
* Roy F. Dibble, ''Albion W. Tourgée'' (1921)

* J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, ''Reconstruction in North Carolina'' (1914)
==Books==
*"Albion W. Tourgée Dead.", ''[[The New York Times]]'', May 22, 1905, p. 7.
Fiction
* Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, William S. Powell, Ed., [http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/tourgee/bio.html "Albion Winegar Tourgee"], (North Carolina Press 1979)

*''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; or, The South Without the Shadow'' (1882)
*''Hot Plowshares'' (1883)
*''The Veteran and His Pipe'' (1886)
*''Button's Inn'' (1887)
*''Black Ice'' (1888)
*''With Gauge and Swallow, Attorneys'' (1889)
*''Murvale Eastman, Christian Socialist'' (1890)
*''Pactolus Prime'' (1890)
*'''89'' (1891)
*''A Son of Old Harry'' (1892)
*''Out of the Sunset Sea'' (1893)
*''An Outing with the Queen of Hearts'' (1894)
*''The Mortgage on the Hip-Roof House'' (1896)
*''The Man Who Outlived Himself'' (1898) stories

Nonfiction

*''The Code of Civil Procedure of North Carolina'', with Barringer & Rodman (1878)
*''An Appeal to Caesar'' (1884)
*''Letters to a King'' (1888)
*''The War of the Standards: Coin and Credit vs. Coin Without Credit'' (1896)
*''The Story of a Thousand, Being a History of the 105th Volunteer Infantry, 1862-65'' (1896)
*''A Civil War Diary'', ed by Dean H. Keller (post, 1965)


==Notes==
==Notes==
{{reflist}}
{{reflist}}

==References==
* Mark Elliott, ''Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to [[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (2006).
* Michael Kent Curtis, [https://web.archive.org/web/20060714013826/http://www.libarts.ucok.edu/history/faculty/roberson/course/1483/suppl/chpXVI/Albion%20Tourgee---Activist,%20Judge.htm "Tourgée" in ''The American National Biography'']. (2000)
* Otto Olsen, ''Carpetbagger's Crusade: The Life of Albion Winegar Tourgée'' (1965)
* Roy F. Dibble, ''Albion W. Tourgée'' (1921)
* J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, ''Reconstruction in North Carolina'' (1914)
* "Albion W. Tourgée Dead.", ''[[The New York Times]]'', May 22, 1905, p.&nbsp;7.
* Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, William S. Powell, Ed., [http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/tourgee/bio.html "Albion Winegar Tourgee"], (North Carolina Press 1979)


==External links==
==External links==
*{{gutenberg author| id=Albion+Winegar+Tourgee | name=Albion W. Tourgée}}
* {{gutenberg author| id=1925| name=Albion W. Tourgée}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Albion Winegar Tourgée |sopt=w}}
*[http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/tourgee/menu.html A Fool's Errand. By One of the Fools.]
* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/tourgee/menu.html A Fool's Errand. By One of the Fools.]
*{{cite book
* [http://www.nyheritage.org/collections/albion-winegar-tourgee-collection New York Heritage - Albion Winegar Tourgée Collection]
*New York Heritage online exhibit: ''[https://nyheritage.org/exhibits/albion-tourgee-civil-war-civil-rights-documenting-american-dialogue-humanity-equality-and Albion Tourgee, from Civil War to Civil Rights: Documenting an American Dialogue on Humanity, Equality, and Justice]''
* {{Cite book
|title=Button's Inn
|title=Button's Inn
|author=Albion Winegar Tourgée
|author=Albion Winegar Tourgée
Line 65: Line 132:
|publisher=Roberts Brothers
|publisher=Roberts Brothers
|isbn=
|isbn=
|url=https://archive.org/details/buttonsinn00tourgoog
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=U1seAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=button%27s+inn
|quote=button's inn.
}} (1887)
}} (1887)
*[https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/albion-tourgee-marker Students Secure Marker for Reconstruction Era Lawyer Albion Tourgée]

{{Authority control}}


{{Persondata
|NAME= Tourgee, Albion Winegar
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
|SHORT DESCRIPTION= American civil rights activist and novelist
|DATE OF BIRTH= May 2, 1838
|PLACE OF BIRTH= [[Williamsfield, Ohio]]
|DATE OF DEATH= May 21, 1905
|PLACE OF DEATH=
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tourgee, Albion Winegar}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tourgee, Albion Winegar}}
[[Category:19th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:American civil rights activists]]
[[Category:American civil rights activists]]
[[Category:American novelists]]
[[Category:American male novelists]]
[[Category:Union Army officers]]
[[Category:Union Army officers]]
[[Category:People of Ohio in the American Civil War]]
[[Category:People of Ohio in the American Civil War]]
[[Category:People of New York in the American Civil War]]
[[Category:People of New York (state) in the American Civil War]]
[[Category:American Civil War prisoners of war]]
[[Category:American Civil War prisoners of war]]
[[Category:People from Ashtabula County, Ohio]]
[[Category:People from Ashtabula County, Ohio]]
[[Category:People from Chautauqua County, New York]]
[[Category:People from Mayville, New York]]
[[Category:Indiana lawyers]]
[[Category:Indiana lawyers]]
[[Category:University of Rochester alumni]]
[[Category:North Carolina lawyers]]
[[Category:North Carolina lawyers]]
[[Category:North Carolina state court judges]]
[[Category:North Carolina Republicans]]
[[Category:1838 births]]
[[Category:1838 births]]
[[Category:1905 deaths]]
[[Category:1905 deaths]]
[[Category:New York (state) Republicans]]
[[Category:19th-century male writers]]
[[Category:Activists from Ohio]]
[[Category:American expatriates in France]]
[[Category:19th-century American judges]]

Revision as of 16:16, 7 February 2024

Albion W. Tourgée
Born
Albion Winegar Tourgée

(1838-05-02)May 2, 1838
Williamsfield, Ohio
DiedMay 21, 1905(1905-05-21) (aged 67)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Rochester
Occupation(s)Jurist, Politician
Known forPlessy v. Ferguson, National Citizens' Rights Association, founder of Bennett College
Political partyRepublican

Albion Winegar Tourgée (May 2, 1838 – May 21, 1905) was an American soldier, lawyer, writer, politician, and diplomat. Wounded in the Civil War, he relocated to North Carolina afterward, where he became involved in Reconstruction activities. He served in the constitutional convention and later in the state legislature. A pioneer civil rights activist, he founded the National Citizens' Rights Association, and founded Bennett College as a normal school for freedmen in North Carolina (it has been a women's college since 1926).

An ally of African Americans since his Civil War days, later in his career Tourgée was asked to aid a committee in New Orleans that was challenging segregation on railways in Louisiana, and he was appointed the lead attorney in the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case. The committee was dismayed when the United States Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public facilities were constitutional; this enabled segregation for decades. Historian Mark Elliott credits Tourgée with introducing the metaphor of "color blind justice" into legal discourse.[1]

Early life

Historical marker in front of Albion Tourgée's boyhood home near Kingsville, Ohio; marker placed in May 2015.

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

Tourgée entered the University of Rochester in 1859. He showed no interest in politics until the university attempted to ban the Wide Awakes, a paramilitary campaign organization affiliated with the Republican Party. Tourgée took on the administration and succeeded in reaching a compromise with the University president.[3] Due to lack of funds, he had to leave the university in 1861, before completing his degree. He taught school to save money in order to return to Rochester.

After the outbreak of the Civil War in April of the same year, Tourgée enlisted in the 27th New York Volunteer Infantry 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 before completing degrees.[4]

Military service

On the left: Lt. Albion W Tourgée, 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in 1863

Fighting in the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the war, Tourgée was wounded in the spine when he was accidentally struck by a Union gun carriage during retreat. He suffered temporary paralysis and a permanent back problem that plagued him for the rest of his life. Upon recovering sufficiently to resume his military career, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. At the Battle of Perryville, he was again wounded.

On January 21, 1863, Tourgée was captured near Murfreesboro, Tennessee and was held as a prisoner-of-war in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, before his exchange on May 8, 1863. He rejoined Union forces and resumed his duties and fought at the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. Under pressure from the military because of his medical condition, Tourgée resigned his commission on December 6, 1863.

He returned to Ohio, where he married Emma Doiska Kilbourne, his childhood sweetheart. They had one child.

Reconstruction era

After the war, Tourgée studied law with an established firm, in an apprenticeship, and gained entrance to the Ohio bar. The Tourgée couple soon moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where he could live in a warmer climate better suited to his war injuries. While there, he established himself as a lawyer, farmer, and editor, working for the Republican newspaper, the Union Registrar. In 1866, he attended the Convention of the Southern Loyalists, where he unsuccessfully attempted to push through a resolution for African-American suffrage.[5]

Considered by locals to be a carpetbagger because he had come from the North, Tourgée participated in several roles during Reconstruction. He drew from this period for later novels that he wrote about the time period. In 1868 he was elected to represent Guilford County at the state constitutional convention, which was dominated by Republicans. He successfully advocated for equal political and civil rights for all citizens; ending property qualifications for jury duty and officeholding; requiring popular election of all state officers, including judges; founding free public education; abolishing the use of whipping posts as punishment for persons convicted of crimes; judicial reform; and uniform taxation. But he learned that the new constitution was the first step to putting these reforms into practice.

Tourgée was elected to the 7th District superior court as a judge, serving from 1868 to 1874. During this period he confronted the increasingly violent Ku Klux Klan, which was very powerful in his district and had members who repeatedly threatened his life. During this time, Tourgée was also appointed as one of three commissioners in charge of codifying North Carolina's previously dual law-code system into one. The new codified civil procedures, at first strongly opposed by the state's legal practitioners, proved in time the most flexible, and informal system in the Union.[6] Among his other activities, Tourgée served as a delegate to the 1875 state constitutional convention and ran a losing campaign for Congress in 1878.

Literary life

The house in Mayville, New York, where Tourgée lived from 1881 until his posting to the French consulate in 1900.

Albion's first literary endeavor was the novel Toinette, written between 1868 and 1869 while he was living in North Carolina. It was not published until 1874, and then under the pseudonym "Henry Churton." It was renamed A Royal Gentleman when it was republished in 1881.[7]

Financial success came after his novel A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools was published in late 1879. Based on his experiences of Reconstruction, the novel sold 200,000 copies. Its sequel, Bricks Without Straw (1880), also was a bestseller. It was unique among contemporary novels by white men about the South, as it presented events from the viewpoints of freedmen, and depicts promises of freedom narrowed by postwar violence and discrimination against freedmen.

In 1881, Tourgée and his family returned north to Mayville, New York, near the Chautauqua Institution in the western part of the state. He made his living as writer and editor of the literary weekly The Continent,[8] but it failed in 1884.

He wrote many more novels and essays in the next two decades, many set in the Lake Erie region to which he had relocated. These included Button's Inn (1887), a novel about early Mormons, who founded their religion in the western part of New York. Called the "Burned Over District", this area was a center of religious fervor in the 19th century. One of his books explored social justice from a Christian perspective; this thought-provoking and controversial novel, Murvale Eastman: Christian Socialist, was published in 1890.

Plessy v. Ferguson case

Near the end of the 19th century, the Southern states had become dominated by white Democrats. The legislatures began to pass new constitutions (beginning with Mississippi in 1890) and laws to raise barriers to voter registration to suppress the black Republican vote and to impose legal segregation in public facilities. Louisiana passed an 1890 law intended "to promote the comfort of passengers" by requiring all state railway companies "to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing separate coaches or compartments" on their passenger trains.

In September 1891 a group of prominent black leaders in New Orleans, made up of mostly men who had been free people of color before the Civil War, organized a "Citizens' Committee" to challenge this law on federal constitutional grounds. To assist them in their challenge, this group retained the legal services of "Judge Tourgée," as he was popularly known.

Perhaps considered the nation's most outspoken white Radical on the "race question" in the late 1880s and 1890s, Tourgée had called for resistance to the Louisiana law in his widely read newspaper column, A Bystander's Notes. Written for the Chicago Republican (later known as the Chicago Daily Inter Ocean and after 1872 known as the Chicago Record-Herald), his column was syndicated in many newspapers across the country. Largely as a consequence of this column, "Judge Tourgée" had become well known in the black community for his bold denunciations of lynching, segregation, disfranchisement, white supremacy, and scientific racism. He was the first choice of the New Orleans Citizens' Committee's to lead their legal challenge to the new Louisiana segregation law.

As they developed their challenge, Tourgée played a strategic role, for instance suggesting that a light-skinned, mixed-race African American challenge the law. Dan Desdunes, the son of prominent Citizens Committee leader Rodolphe Desdunes, was initially selected, but his case was thrown out because he had been a passenger on an interstate train, where the court ruled that state law did not apply. Homer Plessy was selected next. He was arrested after boarding an intrastate train and refusing to move from a white to a "colored" car.

Tourgée, who was lead attorney for Homer Plessy, first deployed the term "color blindness" in his briefs in the Plessy case. He had used it on several prior occasions on behalf of the struggle for civil rights. Tourgee's first use of "color blindness" as a legal metaphor has been documented decades before, while he was serving as a Superior Court judge in North Carolina. In his dissent in Plessy, Justice John Marshall Harlan borrowed the metaphor of "color blindness" from Tourgée's legal brief.[1]

Later life

In the wake of an 1892 lynching in Memphis known as the Peoples Grocery lynching, anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells wrote about the case. After the Memphis Commercial accused her of inciting the incident, she asked Tourgee to represent her in a libel case against the newspaper. Tourgée had largely retired from law (with the exception of his work with the New Orleans "Citizens' Committee") and refused. Tourgée recommended that Wells contact his friend, Ferdinand Lee Barnett, and Barnett agreed to take the case.

This may have been Barnett's introduction to Wells. They married two years later. Barnett came to agree with Tourgée's assessment: that the case did not have a good chance of being won. He said that a black woman would never win such a case heard by an all-white, all-male jury in Memphis, and Wells withdrew her suit.[9] Wells and Barnett married in 1895.

In 1897, following Tourgée's involvement in the Plessy case, President William McKinley appointed him as U.S. consul to France. He sailed to Bordeaux where he was based. About 1900, Tourgée joined the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, an influential Civil War veterans' organization of Union men who had been commissioned officers. He was assigned Companion No. 13949.

Tourgée served in France until his death in early 1905. He had been gravely ill for several months, but then appeared to rebound. The recovery was only brief, momentary, however, and he succumbed to acute uremia. The kidney damage was believed to be related to a Civil War wound.

Tourgée's ashes were interred at the Mayville Cemetery, in Mayville, New York. He is commemorated by a 12-foot granite obelisk inscribed thus: I pray thee then Write me as one that loves his fellow-man.[10]

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; or, The South Without the Shadow (1882)
  • Hot Plowshares (1883)
  • The Veteran and His Pipe (1886)
  • Button's Inn (1887)
  • Black Ice (1888)
  • With Gauge and Swallow, Attorneys (1889)
  • Murvale Eastman, Christian Socialist (1890)
  • Pactolus Prime (1890)
  • '89 (1891)
  • A Son of Old Harry (1892)
  • Out of the Sunset Sea (1893)
  • An Outing with the Queen of Hearts (1894)
  • The Mortgage on the Hip-Roof House (1896)
  • The Man Who Outlived Himself (1898) stories

Nonfiction

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

Notes

  1. ^ a b Elliott, Color Blind Justice....
  2. ^ Gross, Theodore. Albion W. Tourgée. Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1963: 13.
  3. ^ Olsen, A Carpetbagger's Crusade.
  4. ^ Toth, Margaret, "Albion Winegar Tourgée, '62", University of Rochester Library Bulletin, Vol. III, Spring 1953, No. 3.
  5. ^ Michael Kent Curtis, “Tourgée, Albion Winegar,” American National Biography Online, (2000), accessed September 1, 2011, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00994.html.
  6. ^ Olsen, A Carpetbagger's Crusade
  7. ^ Gross, Theodore. Albion W. Tourgée. Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1963: 35.
  8. ^ "The Continent Weekly Magazine". The Week: A Canadian Journal of Politics, Literature, Science and Arts. 1 (1): 15. 6 Dec 1883. Retrieved 20 April 2013.
  9. ^ Karcher, Carolyn L. A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight Against White Supremacy. UNC Press Books, 2016.
  10. ^ Crocker, Kathleen A., "Chautauqua County Lawyers Oppose Segregation: The Robert H. Jackson-Albion W. Tourgee Connection," Jamestown Post-Journal, April 24, 2004. Quotation from Abou ben Adhem, by Leigh Hunt.

References

  • Mark Elliott, Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the 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)
  • Roy F. Dibble, Albion W. Tourgée (1921)
  • J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Reconstruction in North Carolina (1914)
  • "Albion W. Tourgée Dead.", The New York Times, May 22, 1905, p. 7.
  • Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, William S. Powell, Ed., "Albion Winegar Tourgee", (North Carolina Press 1979)

External links

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