Bricks Without Straw A Novel

Step into the world of Albion W. Tourgée's political fiction masterpiece, 'Bricks Without Straw', as it unravels the tumultuous era of Reconstruction in the American South. Unlike its contemporaries, this novel daringly gives voice to emancipated slaves, shedding light on their struggles and aspirations. Through the eyes of Tourgée, a Radical Republican deeply involved in shaping North Carolina's destiny, witness the harrowing consequences of Klan terrorism, civil rights violations, and political corruption.

A classic of American political fiction first published in 1880, a mere three years after Reconstruction officially ended, Bricks Without Straw offers an inside view of the struggle to create a just society in the post-slavery South. It is unique among the white-authored literary works of its time in presenting Reconstruction through the eyes of emancipated slaves. As a leading Radical Republican, the author, Albion W. Tourgée, played a key role in drafting a democratized Constitution for North Carolina after the Civil War, and he served as a state superior court judge during Reconstruction. Tourgée worked closely with African Americans and poor whites in the struggle to transform North Carolina’s racial and class politics. He saw the ravages of the Ku Klux Klan firsthand, worked to bring the perpetrators of Klan atrocities to justice, and fought against what he called the “counter-revolution” that destroyed Reconstruction. Bricks Without Straw is Tourgée’s fictionalized account of how Reconstruction was sabotaged. It is a chilling picture of violence against African Americans condoned, civil rights abrogated, constitutional amendments subverted, and electoral fraud institutionalized. Its plot revolves around a group of North Carolina freedpeople who strive to build new lives for themselves by buying land, marketing their own crops, setting up a church and school, and voting for politicians sympathetic to their interests, until Klan terrorism and the ascendancy of a white supremacist government reduce them to neo-slavery. This edition of Bricks Without Straw is enhanced by Carolyn L. Karcher’s introduction, which sets the novel in historical context and provides an overview of Albion W. Tourgée’s career, a chronology of the significant events of both the Reconstruction era and Tourgée’s life, and explanatory notes identifying actual events fictionalized in the novel.

Reproduction of the original.

Albion W. Tourgée, a former Union officer from Ohio, came to North Carolina in search of economic opportunity after the collapse of the Confederacy. A young man and a fearless advocate of freedmen’s rights, he soon became a radical Republican leader and a prominent figure in local politics. After he quit the South in 1874, Tourgée published a succession of novels and stories which made him famous. Bricks Without Straw, one of his two best-selling novels, is not only a moving story but an important commentary on the Reconstruction process in the South. This new edition of the book remains faithful to the original, which appeared in 1880. In his introduction, Profession Otto H. Olsen gives a comprehensive evaluation of the book and its author, and their impact on the era of Reconstruction. Tourgée was an astute and reliable observer of the Reconstruction scene. In Bricks Without Straw he concentrated on the problems and the continuing dilemma of freed slaves. Led by Nimbus Ware, a “good enough nigger but might aggravating to the white folk,” and Eliab Hill, a crippled mulatto preacher, former slaves begin their postwar experience by availing themselves of the educational, economic, and political opportunities of freedom. But as soon as federal protection is withdrawn, their existence becomes precarious in the face of the Ku Klux Klan and resentful southern whites. The novel conveys a true sense of the trials and accomplishments of a severely handicapped black population caught in the oppressive racist environment of the postwar South. But, as Professor Olsen points out, the book’s pioneering—and still pertinent—literary achievement is its repudiation of racist stereotypes and its effective portrayal of the essential humanity of the freed black slaves.