Editing Lafcadio Hearn (section)

====Marriage and firing by the ''Enquirer''====
On 14 June 1874, Hearn, aged 23, married Alethea ("Mattie") Foley, a 20-year-old African American woman, and former slave, an action in violation of Ohio's [[Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States|anti-miscegenation law]] at that time. In August 1875, in response to complaints from a local clergyman about his anti-religious views and pressure from local politicians embarrassed by some of his satirical writing in ''Ye Giglampz,'' the ''Enquirer'' fired him, citing as its reason his [[illegal marriage]]. He went to work for the rival newspaper ''The Cincinnati Commercial.'' The ''Enquirer'' offered to re-hire him after his stories began appearing in the ''Commercial'' and its circulation began increasing, but Hearn, incensed at the paper's behavior, refused. Hearn and Foley separated, but attempted reconciliation several times before divorcing in 1877. Foley remarried in 1880.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location= |pages=82 |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=89 |url-access=registration}}</ref> While working for the ''Commercial'' he championed the case of [[Henrietta Wood]], a former slave who won a major reparations case.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Trent|first=Sydney|date=February 24, 2021|title=She sued her enslaver for reparations and won. Her descendants never knew.|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/24/henrietta-wood-reparations-slavery/|newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref>

While working for the ''Commercial'' Hearn agreed to be carried to the top of Cincinnati's tallest building on the back of a famous [[steeplejack]], Joseph Roderiguez Weston, and wrote a half-terrified, half-comic account of the experience. Hearn wrote a series of accounts of the Bucktown and Levee neighborhoods of Cincinnati, "...one of the few depictions we have of black life in a border city during the post-Civil War period."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=98 |url-access=registration}}</ref> He also wrote about local black song lyrics from the era, including a song titled "Shiloh" that was dedicated to a Bucktown resident named "Limber Jim."<ref name=GALE>{{cite book| title = A Lafcadio Hearn Companion | pages= 179–180 |last = Gale | first = Robert | year = 2002 | publisher = Greenwood Press | isbn = 0-313-31737-2}}</ref> In addition, Hearn had printed in the ''Commercial'' a stanza he had overheard when listening to the songs of the [[roustabout]]s, working on the city's levee waterfront. Similar stanzas were recorded in song by [[Julius Daniels]] in 1926 and [[Tommy McClennan]] in his version of "[[Bottle Up and Go]]" (1939).<ref>{{cite book|title=The Devil's Music|author=Giles Oakley|publisher=[[Da Capo Press]]|page=[https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/37 37]|isbn=978-0-306-80743-5|date=1997|url=https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/37}}</ref>