Download or read book James Milton Turner and the Promise of America written by Gary R. Kremer and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1991-06-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Milton Turner, Missouri's most prominent nineteenth-century African American political figure, possessed a deep faith in America. The Civil War, he believed, had purged the land of its sins and allowed the country to realize what had always been its promise: the creation of a social and political environment in which merit, not race, mattered. Born a slave, Turner gained freedom when he was a child and received his education in clandestine St. Louis schools, later briefly attending Oberlin College. A self-taught lawyer, Turner earned a statewide reputation and wielded power far out of proportion to Missouri's relatively small black population. After working nearly a decade in Liberia, Turner never regained the prominence he had enjoyed during Reconstruction.