Tourgée, Albion W. Bricks Without Straw, A Novel. New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1880. First Edition. [12025]
Brown cloth decorated in gilt & black, binding near fine with slight edge-wear, 7 x 5 1/4 inches, tight. Frontispiece illustration, 521 clean pp., publisher's catalogue. Small bookseller's ticket on front paste-down, "Brentano's Literary Emporium, 39 Union Square, N. Y." Very good. Hardcover.
A novel based upon the author's experiences with Reconstruction in North Carolina following the American Civil War. It is a sequel to A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools (1879).
Makes use of Negro dialect, the first sentence being: "Wal, I 'clar, now, jes de quarest ting ob 'bout all dis matter o' freedom is de way dat is sloshes roun' de names 'mong us cullud folks."
Albion Winegar Tourgée (1838-1905), b. Williamsfield, Ohio; d. Bordeaux, France. Tourgée is credited for the first legal use of the term "color-blind" while serving as a Superior Court judge in North Carolina. As a Union soldier & officer soldier he was wounded several times, and for a period held as a prisoner-of-war in Libby prison. He and his family moved to Greensboro, NC, immediately after the war, seeking a better climate in which to recover from his wounds. There he established himself as a lawyer, farmer, and editor, and was an avid proponent of the equal rights of all citizens.
His appointment as a Superior Court Judge led to conflict with the Klu Klux Klan, which made threats against his life. He was famous for his views on "the race question," and wrote a syndicated newspaper column in which he denounced lynching, segregation, white supremacy, racism, &c.
In 1896 Tourgée argued in the US Supreme Court in defense of Plessy in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, a case that Plessy lost, leaving in place segregation law in Louisiana, which became the legal basis of Jim Crow laws in the South.
President McKinley appointed Tourgée U.S. consul to France in 1897.
