Albion Winegar Tourgée (1838-1905), American jurist and writer, was an outspoken civil rights advocate and a novelist who pioneered in social criticism.

Albion Winegar Tourgée was born in Williamsfield, Ohio, on May 2, 1838. He attended the University of Rochester from 1859 to 1861, when he enlisted in the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. He participated in a number of important battles, including the First Battle of Bull Run, where he was wounded.

Tourgée resigned from the Army in 1864, was admitted to the bar, and moved in 1865 to Greensboro, N.C. There he became an especially controversial figure because he was one of the few white men who really accepted blacks as equals, and he often lacked tact and self-restraint in expressing his views. He was an influential delegate at the state constitutional convention of 1868 and was appointed one of three commissioners...