author
Lafayette M. Hershaw
1863–1945
A sharp-minded journalist, lawyer, and civil servant, he was part of the circle of Black intellectuals who helped shape public debate in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writing is closely tied to questions of justice, civil rights, and the realities of American life after Reconstruction.
2 Audiobooks
Peonage
by Lafayette M. Hershaw
Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.)
by Archibald Henry Grimké, John Wesley Cromwell, Lafayette M. Hershaw, William Pickens, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, T. G. (Theophilus Gould) Steward
About the author
Born in North Carolina in 1863, Lafayette M. Hershaw went on to study at Atlanta University and later earned a law degree from Howard University. He worked as a teacher and principal before building a career in Washington, D.C., where he served as a clerk and law examiner for the U.S. General Land Office.
Hershaw was more than a government employee: he was also a journalist, essayist, and an active figure in African American intellectual life. Sources describe him as an important presence in Black civic and literary circles in both Atlanta and Washington, and he was connected with organizations and movements that pushed for civil rights and broader opportunity.
For readers today, Hershaw is especially interesting as a writer whose work sits at the meeting point of law, politics, and social history. His surviving publications, including work on peonage, reflect a practical, reform-minded voice shaped by firsthand knowledge of the systems he wrote about.