When originally published, Charles Vincent's scholarship shed new light on the achievements of black legislators in the state legislatures in post-Civil War Louisiana-a state where black people were a majority in the state population but a minority in the legislature. Now updated with a new preface, this volume endures as an important work that illustrates the strength of minorities in state government during Reconstruction. It focuses on the achievements of the black representatives and senators in the Louisiana legislature who, through tireless fighting, were able to push forward many progressive reforms, such as universal public education, and social programs for the less fortunate.

Charles Vincent's book is a classic in the field of African American history-one of the ground-breaking works that helped pave the way for the scholarship that would follow.
-John C. Rodrigue, author of Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862-1880

Charles Vincent is a widely respected historian whose book remains an important revisionist look at the ways that blacks were not simply pawns or victims during Reconstruction, but shaped the terms of emancipation and the agendas of governments in the post-Civil War South.
-Scott P. Marler, University of Memphis