Includes bibliographical references (p. [323]-374) and index.

pt. I. The color-blind crusade. Judge Tourgée and the radical Civil War -- pt. II. The radical advance. The making of a radical individual ist in Ohio's Western Reserve ; Citizen-soldier: manhood, and the meani ng of liberty ; A radical Yankee in the Reconstruction South ; The unfi nished revolution -- pt. III. The counterrevolution. The politics of re membering Reconstruction ; Radical individualism in the Gilded Age ; Be ginning the Civil Rights Movement ; The rejection of color-blind citize nship: Plessy v. Ferguson ; The fate of color-blind citizenship.

Civil War officer, Reconstruction "carpetbagger," best-selling novel ist, and relentless champion of equal rights, Albion Tourgee battled hi s entire life for racial justice. Now, in this engaging biography, Mark Elliott offers an insightful portrait of a fearless lawyer, jurist, an d writer, who fought for equality long after most Americans had abandon ed the ideals of Reconstruction. Elliott provides a fascinating account of Tourgee's life, from his childhood in the Western Reserve region of Ohio (then a hotbed of abolitionism), to his years as a North Carolina judge during Reconstruction, to his memorable role as lead plaintiff's counsel in the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. Tourgee 's brief coined the phrase that justice should be "color-blind," and hi s career was one long campaign to made good on that belief. A redoubtab le lawyer and an accomplished jurist, Tourgee wrote fifteen political n ovels, eight books of historical and social criticism, and several hund red newspaper and magazine articles that all told represent a mountain of dissent against the prevailing tide of racial oppression.

Electronic text and image data. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, Michigan Publishing, 2014. Includes both TIFF files and keyword searchable text. ([ACLS Humanities E-Book]) Mode of a ccess: Intranet.