Abstract

<jats:p>In March 1886, twenty-four-year-old Ida B. Wells wrote in her diary: “Read all day, after going home, ‘Bricks without Straw’ by Judge Tourgée. It deals with the Reconstruction era of Negro freedom and American history, and I like it somewhat. The writer is actuated by a noble purpose and tells some startling truths.” Wells was referring to Albion W. Tourgée's 1880 novel centering around a group of North Carolina freed-people, who buy land, prosper as tobacco farmers, set up a church and school, and vote for politicians sympathetic to their interests, until Ku Klux Klan terrorism and the return to power of a white-supremacist government reduce them to neoslavery. The qualifier “somewhat” may reflect Wells's disappointment with the pessimistic ending, which leaves little room for black agency after the crushing of resistance.</jats:p>