author
Lafayette M. Hershaw
1863–1945
A sharp voice in Black public life at the turn of the 20th century, this journalist and lawyer wrote forcefully about civil rights, labor injustice, and political power. His work links the worlds of activism, public service, and early African American intellectual history.
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 became an African American journalist, lawyer, and federal employee whose career stretched from Reconstruction-era America into the mid-20th century. He studied at Atlanta University and later worked in Washington, D.C., as a clerk and law examiner in the United States General Land Office.
Hershaw was known as an active public thinker as well as a working professional. He wrote on race, politics, and justice, took part in Black intellectual and reform circles in Atlanta and Washington, and was associated with the Niagara Movement, the early civil rights group that helped lay the groundwork for the NAACP.
Readers may know him best for his nonfiction writing, including Peonage, which examined coercive labor systems and the ways oppression continued after slavery. His life and work show how many Black writers of his generation moved across journalism, law, government service, and activism while helping shape the national conversation.