Albion Winegar Tourgée

Albion Winegar Tourgée was an American soldier, lawyer, writer, politician, and diplomat. Wounded in the Civil War, he relocated to North Carolina afterward, where he became involved in Reconstruction activities. He served as a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1868 and served six years as a judge on the Superior Court. Tourgée was also a pioneer civil rights activist who founded the National Citizens' Rights Association and Bennett College as a normal school for freedmen in North Carolina – it has been a women's college since 1926. Tourgée represented Tabitha Ann Holton in her case before the Supreme Court of North Carolina; she applied for and became the first female lawyer in North Carolina and in the Southern United States.