Albion W. Tourgée on Race, Class, and Caste: Plessy v. Ferguson Redux

Abstract:If Albion W. Tourgée is remembered today, it is as a defender of racial justice, who wrote two best-selling Reconstruction novels and served as Homer Plessy's lead attorney. This essay emphasizes Tourgée's awareness of the inextricable link between racial and economic injustice by interweaving analysis of four neglected late works of fiction that explore the complicated relationship between race, class, and caste. Reading Plessy through the lens of these works highlights economic aspects of Tourgée's argument in the case obscured when Plessy is read, as it usually is, retrospectively through the lens of Brown v. Board of Education.