Bricks Without Straw

Tourgee Albion W. Tourgee

Description

A classic of American political fiction first published in 1880, a mere three years after Reconstruction officially ended, Bricks Without Straw offers an inside view of the struggle to create a just society in the post-slavery South. It is unique among the white-authored literary works of its time in presenting Reconstruction through the eyes of emancipated slaves. As a leading Radical Republican, the author, Albion W. Tourgee, played a key role in drafting a democratized Constitution for North Carolina after the Civil War, and he served as a state superior court judge during Reconstruction. Tourgee worked closely with African Americans and poor whites in the struggle to transform North Carolina's racial and class politics. He saw the ravages of the Ku Klux Klan firsthand, worked to bring the perpetrators of Klan atrocities to justice, and fought against what he called the "counter-revolution" that destroyed Reconstruction.Bricks Without Straw is Tourgee's fictionalized account of how Reconstruction was sabotaged. It is a chilling picture of violence against African Americans condoned, civil rights abrogated, constitutional amendments subverted, and electoral fraud institutionalized. Its plot revolves around a group of North Carolina freedpeople who strive to build new lives for themselves by buying land, marketing their own crops, setting up a church and school, and voting for politicians sympathetic to their interests, until Klan terrorism and the ascendancy of a white supremacist government reduce them to neo-slavery. This edition of Bricks Without Straw is enhanced by Carolyn L. Karcher's introduction, which sets the novel in historical context and provides an overview of Albion W. Tourgee's career, a chronology of the significant events of both the Reconstruction era and Tourgee's life, and explanatory notes identifying actual events fictionalized in the novel.

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822392347
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

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Bricks Without Straw

A Novel

 .    Edited with a New Introduction by Carolyn L. Karcher

        Durham & London 

∫2009 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Adobe Caslon by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data appear on the last printed page of this book.

BricksWithoutStrawwas originally published by Fords, Howard, and Hulbert in 1880 and copyrighted by Albion W. Tourgée.

To

o t t o  h .  o l s e n

,

who did so much to restore Tourgée’s legacy,

and to

m y  s t u d e n t s  a t  t e m p l e  u n i v e r s i t y

,

whose enthusiasm forBricksWithouwartStinspired me to

bring it back into print

c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments ix

Note on the Text xi

Introduction CarolynL.Karcher 1

Chronology 65

BricksWithoutStraw 87

Annotations 433

Index 447

a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

i t g i v e s m e e n o r m o u s p l e a s u r e thank everyone who has to helped make this edition possible. My greatest debt, as always, is to my husband Martin, who has accompanied me throughout the intellectual od- yssey of rediscovering Tourgée. H. Bruce Franklin not only introduced me to BricksWithoutStrawand urged me many years ago to try teaching it, but supported this project at every stage, from the drafting of the proposal to the completion of the introduction. My students at Temple University, es- pecially Hank Dallman, whose articulate letter I sent to publishers, de- serve much of the credit for convincing two presses that the novel would find a ready course market. Mark Elliott shared his research on Tourgée with extraordinary generosity, providing numerous leads and professional contacts. The introduction has also benefited from the incisive criticism and valuable suggestions of Otto H. Olsen, Mark Elliott, Brook Thomas, H. Bruce Franklin, Jane Franklin, Jeannie Pfaelzer, and Thorell Tsomondo. Librarians have furnished me with crucial assistance. I particularly thank Charles E. Wright and Hubert Steward of the Interlibrary Loan Divi- sion at the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library; reference librarians Thomas Mann, David Kelly, and Sheridan Harvey of the Library of Con- gress; James O’Brien, president of the Chautauqua County Historical So- ciety (cchs), the repository of the Albion W. Tourgée Papers; and Ellen Schwanekamp, former assistant director of thecchs’s McClurg Museum. I am grateful to the Chautauqua County Historical Society for permission to quote from the Tourgée Papers. Finally, I thank Reynolds Smith for piloting the book through Duke University Press with such contagious enthusiasm.