Bricks without straw
First sentence
Wal, I 'clar, now, jes de quarest ting ob 'bout all dis matter o' freedom is de way dat it sloshes roun' de names 'mong us cullud folks...
Description
"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"--Dukeupress