[December 9th
marks the 145th anniversary of P.B.S.
Pinchback assuming the Louisiana governorship, making him the first
African American governor in U.S. history. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy
five figures from the Reconstruction era, leading up to a special post on
Pinchback himself!]
On two very
distinct yet still interconnected ways to remember a unique and seminal 19th
century figure.
First, two
suggestions for further reading (briefly right now and then at greater length)
on Albion Tourgée.
I wrote about him as part of this
2012 post on my public scholarly inspirations and goals, and would
certainly continue to emphasize those current and communal reasons to remember and
celebrate his amazing life and work. And my graduate school mentor and friend
Carolyn Karcher has published one of the best scholarly and biographical books
on Tourgée to date, A
Refugee from His Race: Albion Tourgée and His Fight against White Supremacy
(UNC Press, 2016). I can’t pretend to do the same justice to Tourgée in a blog
post that Karcher did in her wonderful book, so after a Reading Rainbow-inspired encomium to “read the book!,” I’ll focus
here on one of the conundrums sometimes presented by true Renaissance people
like Tourgée: how we can remember not only the distinct and divergent sides to
his life and career, but also the moments and stories within those threads that
might seem blatantly contradictory.
At the risk of
being reductive (a risk I face with every blog post of course; I hope it always
goes without saying that there’s more to say, and that I’d love to hear further
such things in comments), I would boil one of Tourgée’s seeming contradictions
down to two seminal texts. One is Tourgée’s second novel, A Fool’s
Errand; by One of the Fools (1879), an autobiographical, satirical
depiction of Reconstruction’s tragedies and failures that spares no one—most of
all not its titular author, narrator, and protagonist—from its bitter, caustic
critiques. The second is the nuanced and stirring petition he
filed to the Supreme Court on behalf of his client Homer Plessy; Tourgée,
who studied law and served as a judge for six years in Reconstruction North
Carolina, worked pro bono as Plessy’s lawyer in the case that became Plessy
v. Ferguson (1896). It’s not just that these two texts are
diametrically opposed in tone, although they certainly are that. It’s also that
Fool’s depicts Tourgée’s Reconstruction-era
legal work and activism as an integral (if not indeed the most central) part of
his foolishness, as a quixotic crusade for justice and equality through and
under the law with which the Fool seems thoroughly disenchanted and disabused
by the novel’s end. Yet there we find Tourgée in front of the Supreme Court in
1896, arguing and advocating for Homer Plessy’s equality under the law.
Of course a
single novel does not an entire career and identity make, and of course an
individual’s perspective can also evolve over time. Yet I would argue that
seeing these two texts and moments as contradictory still has value, as it can
help us appreciate how that seeming contradiction can instead become an
exemplary part of Tourgée’s inspiring legacy. For one thing, Tourgée clearly
found a way to move past the personal and professional frustrations he
experienced as a Reconstruction judge and toward an enduring belief in the
power and possibility of the law. At the same time, he just as clearly didn’t
want to elide or forget those frustrations and failures, nor did he exempt his
own limitations and mistakes from a full accounting of them. Indeed, Fool’s represents—among many other
things—a testament to the importance of writing, both in engaging with
histories (even, if not especially, unpleasant ones) and in connecting them to
audiences as we move forward into our shared future. If there’s one main
through-line across Tourgée’s multi-part and inspiring career, it’s precisely the
role that writing can play in confronting our worst and advocating for our
best.
Next figure
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Reconstruction figures or stories you’d highlight?
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