Albion W . Tourgée Albion Winegar Tourgée ( May 2 , 1838 – May 21 , 1905 ) was an American soldier , Radical Republican , lawyer , writer , and diplomat . A pioneer civil rights activist , he founded the National Citizens ' Rights Association , established the historically black women ' s college Bennett College , and litigated for the plaintiff Homer Plessy in the famous segregation case " Plessy v . Ferguson " ( 1896 ) . Historian Mark Elliott credits Tourgée with introducing the metaphor of " color - blind justice " into legal discourse . Early life . Tourgée was born in rural Williamsfield , Ohio on May 2 , 1838 , the son of farmer Valentine Tourgée and Louisa Emma Winegar . His mother died when he was five . He attended common schools in Ashtabula County and in Lee , Massachusetts , where he spent two years living with an uncle . Tourgée entered the University of Rochester in 1859 , but left it in 1861 without attaining a degree to teach school . Upon the outbreak of the Civil War , in April of the same year he enlisted in the 27th New York Infantry . As was common practice with students who enlisted before completing their studies , the University awarded Tourgée an A . B . degree in June , 1862 . Military service . Tourgée was wounded in the spine at the First Battle of Bull Run , from which he suffered temporary paralysis and a permanent back problem that plagued him for the rest of his life . Upon recovering sufficiently to resume his military career , he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry . At the Battle of Perryville , he was again wounded . On January 21 , 1863 , Tourgée was captured near Murfreesboro , Tennessee and was held as a prisoner - of - war in Libby Prison in Richmond , Virginia , before his exchange on May 8 , 1863 . He resumed his duties and fought at the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga . Tourgée resigned his commission on December 6 , 1863 and returned to Ohio . He married Emma Doiska Kilbourne , with whom he had one child . Reconstruction . After the war , Tourgée and his wife moved to Greensboro , North Carolina , where he and his wife could live in a warmer climate better suited to his war injuries . While there , he established himself as a lawyer , farmer , and editor , working for the Republican newspaper the " Union Registrar " . In 1866 , he attended the Convention of the Southern Loyalists , where he unsuccessfully attempted to push through a resolution for African American suffrage . An active participant as a Reconstruction Carpetbagger in his new home , Tourgée had a number of inspiring and harrowing experiences that gave him ample material and impetus for the writing he would later undertake . In 1868 he represented Guilford County at the state , which was dominated by Republicans . There he successfully advocated for equal political and civil rights for all citizens ; ending property qualifications for jury duty and officeholding ; popular election of all state officers , including judges ; free public education ; abolition of whipping posts for those convicted of crimes ; judicial reform ; and uniform taxation . Nevertheless , he discovered that putting these reforms on paper did not translate into an ease of putting them into practice . As a Republican - installed superior court judge from 1868 to 1874 , Tourgée confronted the increasingly violent Ku Klux Klan , which was very powerful in his district and repeatedly threatened his life . Among his other activities , he served as a delegate to the 1875 constitutional convention and ran a losing campaign for Congress in 1878 . Literary life . Albion ' s first literary endeavor was the novel " ' Toinette " , written while living in North Carolina between 1868 and 1869 . It was not published until 1874 under the pseudonym " Henry Churton " ; it was renamed " A Royal Gentleman " when it was republished in 1881 . Financial success came in 1879 with the publication of " A Fool ' s Errand , by One of the Fools , " ( Fords , Howard & Hulbert , Nov 1879 ) a novel based on his experiences of Reconstruction , which sold 200 , 000 copies . Its sequel , " Bricks Without Straw " , also was a bestseller . In 1881 , Tourgée moved to Mayville , New York , near the Chautauqua Institution , and made his living as writer and editor of the literary weekly " The Continent " until it failed in 1884 . He wrote many more novels and essays in the next two decades , many about the Lake Erie region to which he had located , including , among others , " Button ' s Inn " . " Plessy " case . What would become the " Plessy v . Ferguson " case began when a group of prominent black leaders in New Orleans organized a " Citizens ' Committee " in September 1891 to challenge Louisiana ' s 1890 law intended " to promote the comfort of passengers " by requiring all state railway companies " to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races , by providing separate coaches or compartments " on their passenger trains . To assist them in their challenge , this group retained the legal services of " Judge Tourgée , " as he was popularly known . Perhaps the nation ' s most outspoken white Radical on the " race question " in the late 1880s and 1890s , Tourgée had called for resistance to the Louisiana law in his widely read newspaper column , " A Bystander ' s Notes , " which , though written for the " Chicago Republican " ( later known as the " Chicago Daily Inter Ocean " and after 1872 known as the " Chicago Record - Herald " ) , was syndicated in many newspapers across the country . Largely as a consequence of this column , " Judge Tourgée " had become well known in the black press for his bold denunciations of lynching , segregation , disfranchisement , white supremacy , and scientific racism , and he was the New Orleans Citizens ' Committee ' s first choice to lead their legal challenge to the new Louisiana segregation law . Tourgée , who was lead attorney for Homer Plessy , first deployed the term " color blindness " in his briefs in the " Plessy " case and had used it on several prior occasions on behalf of the struggle for civil rights . Indeed , Tourgee ' s first use of the legal metaphor of " color blindness " came decades before while serving as a Superior Court judge in North Carolina . In his dissent in " Plessy " , Justice John Marshall Harlan borrowed the metaphor of " color blindness " from Tourgée ’ s legal brief . Later life . In 1897 , following Tourgée ' s involvement in the " Plessy " case , President William McKinley appointed him U . S . consul to France , and he lived and served there in Bordeaux until his death , in early 1905 , when he became gravely ill for several months , but then appeared to rebound . The recovery was only momentary , however , and he succumbed to acute uremia resulting from one of his Civil War wounds . Tourgée ' s ashes were interred in Mayville , New York , at the Mayville Cemetery and are commemorated by a 12 - foot granite obelisk inscribed thus : " I pray thee then Write me as one that loves his fellow - man . " Other . On September 5 , 1880 Tourgée met his wife in court to settle a financial dispute . Tourgée won , and his wife was issued a $ 35 fine and imprisoned .