During the decades of Bourbon ascendancy after 1874, Alabama institutions were dominated by whites. This is the story of former slave and sharecropper Jack Turner who refused to accept a society so structured. Intelligent, physically imposing and an orator of persuasive talents, Turner was fearless before whites and emerged as a leader of his race.

During the decades of Bourbon ascendancy after 1874, Alabama institutions like those in other southern states were dominated by whites. Former slave and sharecropper Jack Turner refused to accept a society so structured. Highly intelligent, physically imposing, and an orator of persuasive talents, Turner was fearless before whites and emerged as a leader of his race. He helped to forge a political alliance between blacks and whites that defeated and humiliated the Bourbons in Choctaw County, the heart of the Black Belt, in the election of 1882. That summer, after a series of bogus charges and arrests, Turner was accused of planning to lead his private army of blacks in a general slaughter of the county whites. Justice was forgotten in the resultant fear and hysteria.