James Milton Turner and the Promise of America, Volume 1: The Public Life of a Post-Civil War Black Leader

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Kremer, Gary R.
Published: 12/01/2020
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826222251
Pages: 264
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.90d