John Roy Lynch, born enslaved, rose to be Speaker of the Mississippi House and a member of Congress, and here sets down what he saw of Reconstruction from the inside. He recounts the reorganised state government, county conventions, new educational measures, the contest for the Speakership, fusion politics and the election of Blanche K. Bruce to the United States Senate, challenging the accounts then current.
An essential primary source, written in 1913 to correct a record that most histories of the day had distorted. Download the free EPUB.