Distinguished by his hawk-like gaze and shock of silver hair, his
forceful oratory and fierce advocacy, Fredrick L. McGhee was Minnesota's
first African American attorney and an intelligent, tireless civil
rights organizer. He moved onto the national stage when he helped found
the Niagara Movement--the forerunner of today's NAACP, which McGhee
later helped spread across the Midwest. Years later, NAACP chairman Roy
Wilkins would remember of McGhee that "it was through him that the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People reached St.
Paul and [our house at] 906 Galtier Street."
Despite McGhee's crucial role in early civil rights organizing, until
now there has been no serious study of his life and work. Paul D. Nelson
has meticulously reconstructed McGhee's life--from his birth into
slavery during the Civil War, through his education and early career as
a lawyer, to his eventual insight into the power the courts held as a
force for political and social change. Nelson analyzes McGhee's legal
strategies in important cases, such as the Hardy v. East Tennessee,
Virginia, and Georgia Railway Co. case of 1891, the first attempt at
desegregation in the United States, whose failed outcome led five years
later to Plessy v. Ferguson and the doctrine of "separate but equal."
The succession of incremental advances and devastating setbacks in
McGhee's remarkable and accomplished life deserve to be remembered
alongside the victories won by the civil rights leaders he influenced
and whose breakthroughs he made possible. Nelson's biography illuminates
one of the darkest periods in American history and recognizes the role
of one man who helped lead his people into the light.
