Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana

DEBUT A hundred and fifty years before Kamala Harris became the United States’ vice president, Louisiana’s lieutenant governor was being considered by President Ulysses S. Grant for his second-term running mate. In this heartening yet poignant account (winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award from the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage), historian Mitchell (Univ. of Arkansas, Little Rock) introduces the nearly forgotten Oscar Dunn as the nation’s first Black lieutenant governor and acting governor. Formerly enslaved, Dunn succeeded in politics through hard work, deep social ties, and organizational smarts. And although he faced nonstop political and ethnic factionalism along with corruption and mob violence throughout the state, both friends and enemies praised his integrity, acumen, and fairness. Yet when Dunn died under mysterious circumstances, the monument planned to honor him never materialized, and his many accomplishments in furthering Black civil rights nearly disappeared from the historical record. Edwards’s (The Legend of Dr. Yakoob) smudgy, sometimes awkward color art suggests unromanticized glimpses through an out-of-focus time machine.