At Freedom's Door: African American Founding Fathers and Lawyers in Reconstruction South Carolina.Edited by James Lowell Underwood and W. Lewis Burke Jr. With an introduction by Eric Foner. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press The University of South Carolina Press (or USC Press), founded in 1944, is a university press that is part of the University of South Carolina. External link
• , c. 2000. Pp. [xxvi], 269. $34.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 1-57003-357-9.) The essays in this book were given at the first annual meeting of the South Carolina Supreme Court The South Carolina Supreme Court is the highest court in the state of South Carolina. The court is composed of a Chief Justice and four Associate Justices. Selection of Justices Judges are selected by the legislature of South Carolina to serve terms of ten years. Historical Society and then edited by Underwood and Burke, professors at the University of South Carolina
• • Law School. For all their legal antecedents, the essays offer an accessible, well-researched introduction to African Americans' role in Reconstruction South Carolina politics and law. As the book's title suggests, several of these essays deal with lawyers. Two essays--one by Richard Gergel and Belinda Gergel, and another by J. Clay Smith Jr.--consider the complicated life of Jonathan Jasper Wright Jonathan Jasper Wright was an African American lawyer who served as a judge on the Supreme Court of the State of South Carolina during Reconstruction from 1870 to 1877. Wright was born on February 11, 1840 in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. , the son of a runaway slave. Wright rose to become Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina in 1870, but his seven-year career on the bench came to a close when he was forced to resign from the court to avoid an impeachment impeachment, formal accusation issued by a legislature against a public official charged with crime or other serious misconduct. In a looser sense the term is sometimes applied also to the trial by the legislature that may follow. trial. While the Gergels' study recounts Wright's career before and after his time on the bench, Smith's examines his legal opinions, considering the extent to which they reflected the legal methods of the time and the particular pressures Wright faced as an African American. Those biographies of Wright are complemented by Michael Robert Mounter's essay on Richard Theodore Greener. Mounter reminds us that Greener, whose life has often been reduced to a footnote recording that he was the first black graduate of Harvard, had a multifaceted career. As he examines that career in his essay, Mounter echoes the themes set out in the studies of Wright, considering how events conspired to erase Greener from our memories and history. The final essay in the volume, Eric Foner's study of "South Carolina's Black Elected Officials during Reconstruction," makes that point on a larger scale, calling off the roll of African Americans who served the state in Reconstruction, only to find themselves forgotten or belittled be·lit·tle tr.v. be·lit·tled, be·lit·tling, be·lit·tles 1. To represent or speak of as contemptibly small or unimportant; disparage: a person who belittled our efforts to do the job right. by later generations. As this suggests, one of the themes common to many of these articles is how these men and their deeds were lost to history. But this is not simply a collection of laments; the essays leaven leaven (lĕv`ən), agent used to raise bread or other flour foods. Physical leavens include water vapor, which is released as steam at high temperatures (as in popovers), and air, which is incorporated by beating. their accounts of loss with considerable emphasis on the positive contributions these men made to their state, their country, and other African Americans. That theme of contribution is reinforced by James Lowell Underwood's essay on the South Carolina constitution The South Carolina Constitution is the governing document of South Carolina. It describes the structure and function of the state's government. Controversy Two sections of the South Carolina Constitution effectively establish a religious test of 1868, which opens the book, and W. Lewis Burke's essay on the African American graduates of the University of South Carolina Law School, 1873-1877. Taken as a whole, these essays remind us of how complicated Reconstruction was in South Carolina, how hopeful a period it seemed to many, and how extensive its failures were. Yet this book makes a contribution that extends beyond the history of Reconstruction (or African Americans). For those who teach U.S. history survey courses, the essays in this collection provide a wealth of anecdotes and incidents that can help illuminate the period and put a human face on its events. The essays also provide material that would benefit undergraduates in legal history courses or law students taking courses on the legal profession. And while the essays are written at a level that makes them accessible to the generalist, the questions of contribution, memory, and forgetfulness Forgetfulness See also Carelessness. Absent-Minded Beggar, The ballad of forgetful soldiers who fought in the Boer War. [Br. Lit.: “The Absent-Minded Beg-gars” in Payton, 3] absent-minded professor raised in several of the essays could provide starting points for further studies by graduate students interested in exploring such problems in greater depth. ELIZABETH DALE University of Florida |
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