James Milton Turner and the Promise of America: The Public Life of a Post-Civil War Black Leader

James Milton Turner and the Promise of America: The Public Life of a Post-Civil War Black Leader
ISBN-10
082626090X
ISBN-13
9780826260901
Category
History
Pages
276
Language
English
Published
1991-06-01
Publisher
University of Missouri Press
Author
Gary R. Kremer

Description

James Milton Turner, Missouri's most prominent nineteenth-century African American political figure, possessed a deep faith in America. The Civil War, he believed, had purged the land of its sins and allowed the country to realize what had always been its promise: the creation of a social and political environment in which merit, not race, mattered. Born a slave, Turner gained freedom when he was a child and received his education in clandestine St. Louis schools, later briefly attending Oberlin College. A self-taught lawyer, Turner earned a statewide reputation and wielded power far out of proportion to Missouri's relatively small black population. After working nearly a decade in Liberia, Turner never regained the prominence he had enjoyed during Reconstruction.

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