"Albion Tourgee’s devotion to the cause of racial equality was extraordinary. It was impressive not merely because of his unwavering faith in the principle itself but because of his willingness to sacrifice so much to advance it." -- Mark Elliott, “Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson”
"During one of the darkest periods of U.S. history, when white supremacy was entrenching itself throughout the nation, the white writer-jurist-activist Albion W. Tourgee forged an extraordinary alliance with African Americans. Acclaimed by blacks as "one of the best friends of the Afro-American people this country has ever produced" and reviled by white Southerners as a race traitor, Tourgee offers an ideal lens through which to reexamine the often caricatured relations between progressive whites and African Americans." -- Summary Note, A Refugee from His Race: Albion W. Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy, Carolyn L. Karcher
"Why didn’t I know that?"
Our lives are sprinkled with the times we ask ourselves that question. It may even be the most common answer authors give when asked what inspired them to write a book.
I think it akin to a siren song whispering in your ear — “You know you want to know.”
For me, the most recent one involved Albion Tourgee (1838-1905). It all started a couple of months ago with The Washington Post Magazine, a Saturday morning staple for those of us dinosaurs who still get the paper delivered and discuss the news and issues at the breakfast table.
The issue featured, “The Forgotten Northern Pre-Civil War Origins of Jim-Crow” by Steve Luxenberg.
I knew a little something about the so-called “Separate But Equal” laws in the south. Here locally in the DMV there were stories. In 1902, just six years after the Supreme Court upheld the state’s rights in Plessy v. Ferguson, L.M. McDonald, a black teacher in Washington, was arrested in Alexandria for sitting in the "whites only" part of a streetcar.
With coffee cup in one hand, and pleased the cacophony of TV and radio sounds in our house were turned off, I picked up the magazine and started reading Ferguson’s article. He found what might be the earliest or one of the earliest references in the newspapers on the use of Jim Crow, “as a shorthand for discrimination in public accommodation.”
I had always thought the term began after the war during Reconstruction, and that it applied to the South, not the North.
Luxenberg’s new book is titled, “Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation.”
The case is, of course, a landmark, and might be the first entry if we ever come up with a “Supreme Court Decision Hall of Shame.” In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy, a French-speaking black man born in New Orleans a year into the Civil War, was arrested for breaking a Louisiana law that required the separation of the races on the trains.
Plessy was the defendant in the 1896 case, which Tourgee argued before the Supreme Court justices. The 7 to 1 ruling upheld what would become known as, ”separate, but equal," or "Jim Crow" law. The decision ushered in a horrible half century of legal discrimination and widespread violence against African Americans.
Wanting more info on Tourgee, I googled him and found “Albion Tourgee, Remembering Plessy’s Lawyer on the 100th Anniversary of the Plessy v. Ferguson” by Michael Kent Curtis.
I began reading:
Albion Winegar Tourgee is the lawyer who brought (and lost) the landmark nineteenth century civil rights case challenging Louisiana's law segregating railroad cars.
Then this:
In 1865, partly on the advice of a doctor that he seek a warmer climate for his health, he and his wife moved to Greensboro, North Carolina.
Say what? Greensboro? I was born and raised there.
Why, indeed, did I not know that?
For as long as I can remember, and to this day, Greensboro holds pride for its association with a handful of people and places. They include the pivotal “Battle of Guilford Courthouse” fought during the Revolutionary War (General Greene led the troops), and the birthplace of short story master O’Henry and First Lady Dolly Madison. For a lot of folks, Greensboro is best known as the site of the 1960 Woolworth’s Sit-In by four students at Greensboro A&T.
From there, there’s probably no agreement on the rest of what comes to mind. A Greensboro word cloud surely includes the Quakers, the GGO, Tobacco Road hoops, textiles, and ever so sadly, the killing of five anti-Klan protesters in 1979.
I was born in Greensboro in 1956 and spent my first 22 years there. I’m familiar with all those pieces of the Gate City’s puzzle.
For Albion Tourgee, I had no clue.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of good information and sources on him, including “The Gate City Carpetbagger,” published in O’Henry (February 2015) by Dr. Scott Romine (Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Mark Elliott, a professor of history at UNC-G wrote, “Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson,” as well as editing, “Undaunted Radical: The Selected Writings and Speeches of Albion W. Tourgée.”
Using those sources and others, let’s take a look at the life of Albion Tourgee.
Note: Many thanks to Professor Elliott. Corresponding with him helped clear up muddy waters, and he provided me with several documents and images.
In 1838, Albion Tourgee came into the world in a small Ohio town to descendants of French Huguenots. In this, the antebellum period, chattel slavery and the internal slave trade were part and parcel of life in the South. In Ohio, William Lloyd Garrison was sparking moral arguments against slavery among his fellow abolitionists.
Elliott tell us Tourgee spent his youth in the Western Reserve of Ohio, at a time when this region of the country was “a veritable cauldron of radicalism on political, religious and social issues.” The young man developed a love of reading and attended Rochester University.
When the war winds blew, Tourgee enlisted with the 27th New York Volunteers in April 1861. In the First Battle of Manassas/Bull Run outside of Washington, he survived the flying lead of battle, only to be ran into by a Union gun carriage. Tourgee was taken to a hospital in Washington. The doctor told him he might be paralyzed by a damaged spine.
Able to walk again, but suffering the nagging pain for the rest of his life, Tourgee re-enlisted with the 105th Ohio Infantry where he was breveted to Lieutenant. Tourgee was captured at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee, imprisoned and later released.
His time spent in the war exposed Tourgee to "contraband," the escapee slaves. He listened to their remarkable stories of finding the first steps of freedom and emancipation.
After the war was over, Tourgee and his wife Emma moved to Greensboro. Their only child Aimee was born there in 1870.
Why did Tourgee choose to head south to Greensboro?
Tourgee wrote that the main reason was the milder climate to help heal his war wounds.
Professor Elliott tells us he chose North Carolina as the place to seek “a new opportunity to serve his country, to assist the former slaves, and perhaps achieve social standing and financial security in the bargain.”
While in college, Tourgee had penned a paper that sympathized with a group of Guilford County residents who were arrested for possessing an anti-slavery book by North Carolina author Hinton Helper.
In April 1865, Tourgee wrote to Governor Holden, who responded favorably and introduced him to the leaders of a Quaker community in Guilford County.
In an advertisement for the house he bought and later sold in Greensboro, Tourgee’s description of the city points to the type of things that likely impressed him. They include the “climate, health, churches, a Female College, the finest system of Graded Schools in the State, Bennett Seminary, a finely endowed collegiate institution for colored people, and not a single bar-room.”
Tourgee and his family lived in a home on Asheboro Street, just a short walk from the main center of town in the integrated section. The road was renamed Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, a move that surely would have pleased Tourgee. Tourgee would also be pleased the Civil Rights Museum is a short distance away in downtown Greensboro.
To earn money, Tourgee rented a nursery. He hired previously enslaved workers at good wages, set up a school, and attended black churches.
My learning about Tourgee's stay in Greensboro took a remarkable turn in March when exchanging emails with Professor Eliott.
The West Green nursery was located in the southwest part of Greensboro where we lived when I was a toddler. The precise site of the garden may never be known, but references indicated its site was near the Masonic and Eastern Star Home at Holden and Spring Garden Streets.
Where we lived on Trinity Avenue is a short distance away. I recall the dozens of times we drove past the Masonic home on Sunday mornings on our way to College Park Baptist Church and at other times. It loomed large on the hill, an invitation to visit I never took. The Grand Lodge, redeveloped in the 1980s was dedicated in 1912 with masonic officials on hand.
Professor Elliott wrote to me:
It looks like West Green Street may have extended across West Market originally, and probably the Nursery was on the East side of the road somewhere in Highland Park or where Wendover cuts through. Whatever was left of the Nursery must have been bulldozed by those two projects--building the housing development and Wendover Ave.
Highland Park is the neighborhood where my family lived until 1963 when we moved to a new suburb further out from downtown. I hold great memories of going to the Guilford Dairy at W. Market and United Street. My brother and older sister frequented the Boar and Castle. The house we lived in is still there, but both of the above landmarks are gone.
In Greensboro, Tourgee was on the front lines of Reconstruction. He became a delegate, commissioner, a Superior Court Judge, and organized efforts to help African Americans. He edited and published The Red String and The Union Register.
In a move that no doubt infuriated the majority of the citizens of Greensboro and raised many eyebrows, the Tourgees adopted Adaline Patillo, an ex-slave. Elliott writes:
...both Tourgees treated Adaline as a daughter, offering her all the opportunities for intellectual and career advancement.
The loving couple sent Adaline to the Hampton Institute, where she became a classmate of Booker T. Washington.
In his paper (“Adaline and the Judge”), Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., tells us Adaline's husband, Leroy Williams Woods, ran the first all-black establishment in Greensboro to serves whites in the downtown section. Adaline would later tell of fond memories she had of walking by the Tourgee home in Greensboro (demolished in the 1940s).
It didn’t take long before Tourgee was labeled a "carpetbagger." The paper, “Albion Tourgee and the Fight for Civil Rights,” give us this description.
To the Southern mind it meant a scion of the North, a son of an "abolitionist," a creature of the conqueror, a witness of their defeat, a mark of their degradation: to them he was hateful, because he recalled all of evil or shame which they had ever known. They hissed the name through lips hot with hate, because his presence was hateful to that dear, dead Confederacy which they held in tender memory, and mourned for in widow's weeds, as was but natural that they should do.
The whispers and name calling Tourgee could ignore. Another matter was the KKK, who had plans for him. Greensboro was a bit milder than some other parts of the state, but make no mistake, Tourgee lived in fear of violence.
In her book, "A Refuge from His Race," Carolyn L. Karcher tells us Tourgee worked side by side with Charles H. Moore. The Greensboro Library writes that Moore, a graduate of Amherst College, helped found North Carolina A&T and led Republican efforts to register black women in the state.
Tourgee lasted a decade in Greensboro. Continued threats and the failure of Reconstruction prompted his exit.
Although he left for good, Tourgee was not through with Greensboro and the South’s intolerance for civil rights. As someone who seemed to be always looking for a new challenge, and holding a wide world view, he moved to Denver and edited the Denver Evening Times. It was there in 1879, he penned “A Fool’s Errand.” Tourgee based the novel on his experience in Greensboro during Reconstruction. “Documenting the American South” tells us the book was “enormously popular book in its time.” The Chicago Herald wondered it it was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Although Tourgee did pen a few lines of sympathy towards the former Confederates, one figures the novel did not sell well in Greensboro. O'Henry knew exactly who is audience was when he drew a political cartoon that mocked Tourgee -- "Judge Tourgee Leaving Greensboro."
After the publication, Tourgee continued to work in the realm of civil rights for African Americans and social reform. He moved to Mayville, New York, where he published and edited a weekly literary magazine, Our Continent, and wrote more novels.
Tourgee founded the National Citizen’s Rights Association in 1891, a forerunner of sorts to the NAACP. He also helped pass Ohio’s anti-lynching law.
When Frederick Douglass passed away in February, 1895, the souls of every person who cared about civil rights ached and mourned. Tourgee delivered the eulogy for Douglass in Boston.
The following April, Tourgee, Chief Counsel, took the train to Washington to argue the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. On the morning of April 13, he walked into the old Senate Chamber of the United States Capitol Building. The Supreme Court met there before moving across the street in 1935.
It's probably my own ignorance, but it seemed a bit odd to me why Tourgee was chosen as lead counsel. I asked Luxenburg and he gave me this reply:
As they prepare a test case of Louisiana’s new Separate (Railroad) Car Act, the members of the New Orleans committee (which brings the test case) seeks his advice. In 1891, Tourgee is probably the country’s most famous white advocate for civil rights, and the New Orleanians are avid readers of Tourgee’s weekly newspaper column.
A year later, a committee member asks again for guidance. Probably, the committee wants Tourgee’s public support. Tourgee, a former judge, offers more — a willingness to be involved. He’s in western NY state. He’s not thinking about taking over the case. But the committee’s main engine, Louis Martinet, is thrilled to have such a prominent advocate on the committee’s side. That leads him to offer Tourgee control of the legal strategy. Tourgee offers to work for free. All those factors combine to cement the relationship. It becomes Tourgee’s case, for better or worse.
Tourgee was certainly prepared. As Elliott points out:
"Tourgee had nurtured the Plessy case with the care of a horticulturist tending a prized set of orchards."
The court’s 7-1 decision came about a month later and reflected white attitudes at the time. The Northern papers were disappointed.
A photograph seen in Elliott’s book shows Tourgee two weeks after the Plessy decision was announced. One sees an aging man who had lived with the pain of wounds he received in the Civil War, saw first hand the wrath of conservative backlash during Reconstruction, and now, trying to process what the court’s decision would mean to those he had so long tried to help.
Perhaps Tourgee took some solace in what the Citizen Committee in New Orleans wrote:
"We still believe that we were right and our cause is sacred, when we are encouraged by the indomitable will and noble defense of the Hon. Albion W. Tourgee."
After the turn of the century, Tourgee’s war wounds came back. He was bed-ridden for six months. The news he read in the newspapers included the continuation of dozens of lynchings each year.
Serving his country in Bordeaux, France as Consul, Tourgee took his last breath there on May 21, 1905. Acute uremia was the cause. His remains were sent home and were interred at Mayville Cemetery. A special ceremony was held there in November with almost three dozen African Americans, including anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, who came to pay their respects.
Although thirty years had passed since he left, and conservatives had regained full power, there probably was not a lot of tears dropped in Greensboro over the death of Tourgee. Nevertheless, the public memory of Tourgee improved. It’s sad his daughter Aimee (1871-1909), who illustrated some of her father’s novel and books, did not live to see any of this.
In 1925, a Dr. Jackson of North Carolina College lectured on the life of Tourgee in the Sunday School rooms of the West Market Methodist Church. That church, whose congregation goes back to the 1820s, is one of the oldest in Greensboro.
Jackson told the audience, “Tourgee was the most bitterly hated man in North Carolina.” At the same time, ”some of the best people of Greensboro regarded him as a man of character.”
In 1963, Otto Olsen devoted twenty pages in the North Carolina Historical Review to Tourgee’s life. He points out that his story and novels were “soon relegated to undeserved obscurity.” Olsen’s account is one of the best, but since it was published in a historical review, one doubts how many read it (Thank goodness for JSTOR).
But two years later, Johns Hopkins Press published "Carpetbagger’s Crusade" by Olsen. In his review McNeil Smith wrote:
This new and excellent biography of Tourgee fills a real need, giving details of the man’s life in a day when history is, for most of us, either a void, or else badly distorted. Anyone viewing Tourgee from this distance cannot fail to appreciate the remarkable foresight and even brilliance of this man who picked Greensboro.
The warmer embraces continued when Greensboro erected two historical markers downtown, the first a state highway marker in the 1980s. Elliott’s book makes a great contribution towards telling the story of Tourgee and further rescues his reputation.
As far as future recognition, perhaps the city could make plans for the upcoming 125th anniversary of Plessy v. Ferguson in 2021. This would also dovetail with the on-going 150th anniversary of Reconstruction.
Possibilities include a new state highway marker, a way finding sign made with longer lasting materials to replace or supplement the current one showing some age, and naming a park or street in his name. Perhaps playwrights, musicians, and re-enactors will be inspired.
A symposium on civil rights and Reconstruction would be meaningful, too. I would attend, know that I know...
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