Further Reading

Find resources related to black suffrage and political participation on this page, or access a general bibliography for Reconstruction in the State by State section of this site.

Web sites

Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P.Murray Collection, 1818-1907
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/
aap:@field(SUBJ+@band(Afro-Americans--Civil+rights+))
The Library of Congress's American Memory Web site has a collection of pamphlets documenting nineteenth-century African American perspectives. This group of pamphlets addresses issues of civil rights.

The Barbarous Decision of the United States Supreme Court Declaring the Civil Rights Act Unconstitutional
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/turnerbd/turner.html
Part of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Documenting the American South archive, Henry McNeal Turner's The Barbarous Decision of the United States Supreme Court Declaring the Civil Rights Act Unconstitutional and Disrobing the Colored Race of All Civil Protection. The Most Cruel and Inhuman Verdict Against a Loyal People in the History of the World was published in 1893, after the Supreme Court struck the 1875 Civil Rights Act from the books.

America's Reconstruction: Reconstruction Government in the South
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section4/section4_recon.html
The Digital History Web site, a collaboration between the University of Houston, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and other institutions, presents an online version of Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney's exhibit on Reconstruction. This section describes the first state governments to be elected by black voters, and to include black legislators.

Books

Cheek, William, and Cheek, Aimee Lee. John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-65. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Donald, David. Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.

Drago, Edmund L. Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.

Foner, Eric. Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Holt, Thomas. Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction. University of Illinois Press, 1977.

Langston, John Mercer. From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capital or the First and Only Negro Representative in Congress from the Old Dominion. 1894. New York: Kraus Reprint Co: 1969.

Litwack, Leon and Meier, August, eds. Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century. University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Lynch, John Roy. The Facts of Reconstruction. New York: Arno Press, 1968.

----. Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch. Edited by John Hope Franklin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970.

McFarlin, Annjennette Sophie, ed. Black Congressional Reconstruction Orators and Their Orations, 1869-1879. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Prather, Patricia Smith and Clements, James. From Slave to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam Houston. Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1993.

Rabinowitz, Howard, ed. Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

Redkey, Edwin S. Respect Black; the Writings and Speeches of Henry McNeal Turner. Arno Press, 1971.

Sterling, Dorothy, ed. The Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Words of African Americans. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.

Trefousse, Hans. Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth Century Egalitarian. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
About the Film | Forty Acres and a Mule | Plantations in Ruins | Black Legislators
Northerners in the South | Access to Learning | Slave to Sharecropper | The Negro Question
In God We Trust | White Men Unite | State by State | Teacher's Guide

American Experience | Feedback | Search | Shop | Subscribe | Web Credits

© New content 1997-2004 PBS Online / WGBH