August Reckoning: Jack Turner and Racism in Post-Civil War Alabama

An important story of one man's life, lived with courage and principle

During the decades of Bourbon ascendancy after 1874, Alabama institutions like those in other southern states were dominated by whites. Former slave and sharecropper Jack Turner refused to accept a society so structured. Highly intelligent, physically imposing, and an orator of persuasive talents, Turner was fearless before whites and emerged as a leader of his race. He helped to forge a political alliance between blacks and whites that defeated and humiliated the Bourbons in Choctaw County, the heart of the Black Belt, in the election of 1882. That summer, after a series of bogus charges and arrests, Turner was accused of planning to lead his private army of blacks in a general slaughter of the county whites. Justice was forgotten in the resultant fear and hysteria.


Author: William Warren Rogers, Robert David Ward
Publisher: University Alabama Press
Published: 06/30/2004
Pages: 207
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.62lbs
Size: 8.50h x 6.06w x 0.52d
ISBN: 9780817351199

About the Author
William Warren Rogers is professor emeritus of history at Florida State University, where he has spent more than a half-century supervising the scholarly efforts of graduate and undergraduate students.