From Slave to Statesman: The Life of Educator, Editor, and Civil Rights Activist Willis M. Carter of Virginia by Robert Heinrich and Deborah Harding (review)

Born enslaved on the Locust Dale plantation in Albemarle County, Virginia, Willis McGlascoe Carter led a remarkable life. His twenty-one-page memoir, written in the 1890s, called A Sketch of My Life and Our Family Record, illuminates the life and times of an activist who stood firm in his convictions that black Americans were entitled to the same rights as white Americans. His story was exceptional because he had been afforded the opportunity to read and write when only about 5 percent of enslaved people were literate.

Carter claimed that his owner, Ann Goodloe and her family, treated the enslaved people at Locust Dale kindly and with respect, with families mostly kept together without the constant fear and threat of being sold. Carter was well aware of his ancestral roots, tracing his lineage back to his great-grandmother. He was the first of eleven children born to Rhoda and Samuel Carter. Throughout his life, Willis Carter pursued education and economic opportunity. Eventually he attended Wayland Seminary and completed his studies in 1881. When he married Serena Bell Johnson, he chose a mate who was also involved in racial uplift work. Both of them worked in the Staunton, Virginia, school system and endured economic ups and downs throughout their lives. Willis Carter taught in Staunton for twenty years, eventually becoming principal of a school. As editor of the Southern Tribune, later renamed the Staunton Tribune, he operated under the masthead motto "Justice to All." Carter's leadership extended beyond Staunton; his activism in various organizations ranged from president of the National Memorial Association, to commissioner for Staunton for the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, to head of the Negro Protective Association of Virginia. He was also active with the Virginia Conference of Colored Men in Charlottesville and the Negro Education and Industrial Association of Virginia.

Carter's activism during a time of violent and virulent race relations is well documented by authors Robert Heinrich and Deborah Harding. This slim volume weaves together Carter's life and the political and legal obstacles by conservative white Democrats that confronted African Americans at every turn. The 1894 Walton Act, for example, provides a glimpse into the lengths that racists would go to nullify black voting rights and the efforts by African Americans to resist disenfranchisement. The three appendixes round out the volume, including Carter's "sketch" transcribed by Harding; the tribute from colleagues that attested to the admiration and respect he commanded; and a paper entitled "Colored Men to Protest" that was presented to the 1901 Virginia constitutional convention. All exemplified Carter's character. The authors' clear and concise notes mirror Carter's "sketch," while the bibliography explores the wide terrain of southern race relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From Slave to Statesman: The Life of Educator, Editor, and Civil Rights Activist Willis M. Carter of Virginia is a jaunt through one man's extraordinary life.