Though Justice Sleeps

In the years between 1880 and 1900, the wonderful promise of a future of freedom that was made to black people by emancipation was broken. Federal troops were withdrawn from the South, freed slaves were not given the land promised them, white terrorist groups ran rampant, and the same defenders of slavery who led the Civil War against the North returned to positions of power. Though Justice Sleeps demonstrates, however, that black people were more than victims of Jim Crow laws and racial violence. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner encouraged African Americans to take pride in Africa, Richard L. Davis organized mineworkers, and black women in New Orleans marched in the streets in support of striking dockworkers. When Booker T. Washington arrived in Tuskegee, Alabama, and started the Tuskegee Institute, the flame of freedom was kindled for future generations.