For the first time since the early years of the American republic,
the period following emancipation held out the promise of a true
colorblind democracy. The freed slaves hoped for forty acres and a
mule by which they could work as small farmers, erect houses,
establish families, and live free from the gaze of planter and
overseer. In this first light of freedom, blacks needed help to
learn how to function in a democracy and how to protect themselves
from whites eager to find a new way to exploit their labor.
In "Freedom's Shore," Russell Duncan tells of the efforts of
Tunis Campbell, a black carpetbagger and fellow abolitionist and
friend of Frederick Douglass, to lift his race to equal
participation in American society. Duncan focuses on Campbell's
determined work to push radical reforms, draft a new constitution
for Georgia, and pass laws designed to ensure equality for all
citizens of the state. Campbell made significant contributions at
the state level, but his true importance was in his home district
of Liberty and McIntosh counties on the Georgia coast. There he
forged the black majority into a powerful political machine that
controlled county elections for years. He successfully protected
black rights, always promoting freedom-in-fact, not merely
freedom-by-law. Yet, as many black politicians throughout the South
were discovering, radical strength at the local level was
insufficient to stop the growing strength of reactionary white
politics at the state level.
After years of struggle, Campbell was finally defeated by the
white Democrats. Charged with political corruption, he was removed
from his state and local political offices; at the age of
sixty-four, over the protests of President Grant among others,
Campbell was sentenced to Georgia's hire-out convict labor program.
The black machine in McIntosh County, however, was not destroyed in
Campbell's defeat, but instead remained an active force in county
politics for forty years, returning a black legislator to the
General Assembly in every election, except for the decade of the
1890s, until 1907.
Presenting the beginnings of the battle for civil rights in the
South, "Freedom's Shore" tells of the tenacity and achievements of
one black political figure, of the hopes and dreams of a legally
free people amid the political and social realities of
Reconstruction Georgia.
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