Albion tourgee biography of william

American civil rights activist

Albion Winegar Tourgée (May 2, 1838 – May 21, 1905) was an American soldier, lawyer, writer, politician, and diplomat.

Wounded in the Civil War, he relocated to North Carolina afterward, where he became involved in Reconstruction activities.

Albion tourgee biography of william

He served in the constitutional convention and later in the state legislature. Albion Tourgée is also a pioneer civil rights activist who founded the National Citizens' Rights Association and Bennett College as a normal school for freedmen in North Carolina (it has been a women's college since 1926).

An ally of African Americans since his Civil War days, later in his career Tourgée was asked to aid a committee in New Orleans that was challenging segregation on railways in Louisiana, and he was appointed the lead attorney in the landmark Plessy v.

Ferguson (1896) case. The committee was dismayed when the United States Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" public facilities w