Jack Turner: The Negro and Reconstruction in the Deep South

FAIN: FA-10219-70

William W. Rogers
Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL 32306-0001)

Biography of Jack Turner, illiterate but highly intelligent Negro who emerged after 1865 as a remarkable spokesman for his race during Reconstruction. Operating in the Black Belt county of Choctaw, the former slave urged Alabama Negroes to assert their constitutional rights. In 1882, falsey accused of plotting to massacre the white citizens of Choctaw County, he was lynched by a mob on the main street of Butler, the county seat. Almost nothing is known about individual Negroes during Reconstruction. Yet scholars no longer believe that freedmen were hapless, ignorant, nameless people manipulated first by Republicans and later by Bourbon Democrats. Understanding Jack Turner can give insight into the roots of social problems stemming from Reconstruction.