At Freedom's Door: African American Founding Fathers and Lawyers in Reconstruction South Carolina - Softcover

Underwood, James Lowell; Jr., W. Lewis Burke; Foner, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570035865 ISBN 13: 9781570035869

Publisher: University of South Carolina Press, 2005

Synopsis

At Freedom's Door rescues from obscurity the identities, images, and long-term contributions of black leaders who helped to rebuild and reform South Carolina after the Civil War. In seven essays, the contributors to the volume explore the role of African Americans in government and law during Reconstruction in the Palmetto State. Bringing into focus a legacy not fully recognized, the contributors collectively demonstrate the legal acumen displayed by prominent African Americans and the impact these individuals had on the enactment of substantial constitutional reforms - many of which, though abandoned after Reconstruction, would be resurrected in the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Underwood: (Columbia, SC) Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Law, University of South Carolina. Author of four volumes on the Constitution of South Carolina and a nationally recognized book on civil litigation. Burke: (Columbia, SC) Professor of law at the University of South Carolina. Coeditor of Matthew J. Perry: The Man, His Times, and His Legacy.

From Kirkus Reviews

A surprisingly accessible history of politics and race in Reconstruction-era South Carolina.It is not often that regional history has much appeal to anyone beyond the scholars who write it and those who are being written about. But here is an exception, seven essays on the role black leaders played in the rebuilding of South Carolina following the Civil War. Its editors, Burke (Law/Univ. of South Carolina) and Underwood (Law/Univ. of South Carolina), offer strong proof that scholarship need not be dry and uninteresting, anymore than regional history need be marginal history. This is especially true when the subject matter is Reconstruction, which here is reexamined, less as a playground for corruption and incompetence, and more as a glorious failure. Why South Carolina? South Carolina had more black officials (315) than any other state during Reconstruction because it had the largest black population. Indeed, at one point in the 1870s South Carolina had six black congressmen, a figure that hasn't been matched since. Many of these men however, died embittered, impoverished, or both. Richard Greener, for example, was the first black professor at the University of South Carolina. A diplomat and a domestic government official, he held numerous postings in a long career that included a position as the US Consul in Vladivostok, Russia. But what is best remembered about him, and what saves him from total obscurity, is the fact that he was the first black Harvard graduate. Justice Jonathan Jasper Wright, the first black to serve on a state supreme court, was forced to resign over unproved allegations he accepted a $2,500 bribe. Many of these accounts have a somewhat saccharine quality to them that could easily descend to bathos, but Underwood and Burke exercise enough restraint in their narratives to prevent that.In the end, good writing and good scholarship triumph. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1570035865
• ISBN 13: 9781570035869
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312