Trailblazer: The Legacy of Bishop Henry M. Turner During the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crowism
When the Civil War began in 1861, the conflict evoked feelings of pride, patriotism, and hatred in both blacks and whites. As the war raged on, Reverend Henry McNeal Turner ministered to his brethren serving in the United States Colored Troops (USCT), segregated units of the Union Army. Although slavery ended in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction died with his assassination. The Ku Klux Klan and ex–Confederates not only regained control of the South but also resisted the federal government’s early attempts at civil rights legislation by intimidating, murdering, and disenfranchising ex–slaves. In response to the brutality and the rise of Jim Crowism, Turner served as a beacon of hope for thousands of freedmen while respectively serving in state and local politics. Bishop Henry M. Turner’s story deserves more attention because he is an overlooked transitional figure in American history. This paper will examine Turner’s contributions to the A.M.E. Church, politics, and civil rights.
Bishop Turner's African Dream
ment, it has existed in one form or another among American Negroes since before the Civil War. In the years between Reconstruction and World War I the chief prophet of black nationalism was Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834-1915), who urged his people to go to Africa. Turner, a blunt, forceful man who pushed his way into the upper ranks of Negro leadership, lacked formal education or wide acceptance by Negro intellectuals. W. E. B. Du Bois remembered him as the "last of his clan: mighty men, physically and mentally, men who started at the bottom and hammered their way to the top by sheer brute strength."2 But Turner was soon forgotten because journalists and historians who could have kept his
Continents of Liberty: Emerson and Gerald Vizenor’s Chair of Tears
Ralph Waldo Emerson protested what came to be known as the Trail of Tears in a public letter to President Martin Van Buren in 1838. Th e Cherokee Nation, he argued, had been cheated by a “sham treaty” (Emerson, “Letter” 50), the will of the people ignored, and a false acquiescence to removal written into law. In making a passionate appeal to the highest “chair” of the land, Emerson underscored the great political and moral stakes involved: