Dylan Penningroth's Before the Movement: the Hidden History of Black Civil Rights traces the legal lives of African Americans from the 1830s to the Civil Rights era concluding with implications for today's understanding. It shows the antecedent daily life of local people that shaped the popular movement. Penningroth drives the narrative through extensive analyses of primary sources focused on both the experience of his own family (photos, films or letters) and extensively researched legal records (deed books, marriage licenses, or court proceedings) from four states and Washington D.C. These are further extending by newspapers, sermons, or other relevant organizational or personal records.

The book is arranged chronologically, with its four parts divided by key historic events that show the changing legal understandings or acceptance for the given time period. The main foci are ideas about family, the church, property and contract. Part I: Slavery explores enslaved individuals rights or acceptance of property ownership. Part II: Reconstruction centers on the shift from slavery to freedom through the legal creation of civil rights, detailing what freedom meant. Part III: the Jim Crow Era looks at the establishment of separate societies strengthened through the growing value of incorporation to supply safety nets otherwise lacking. Part IV: The Movement Era shows how the strategies and legal groundwork laid in the other sections comes together to help fuel and maintain the Civil Rights Movement, why else would African Americans struggle and engage within the system instead of leaving or forming their own? There was the possibility of change.

This is an extensively researched and detailed exploration of the legal progress of African Americans that is looking beyond the freedom struggle. It explores the day to day realities that answer how people lived, earned the money to pay for their food and made plans for old age. Penningroth is also clear on the language, the assumption in this text, is that someone is Black unless it is otherwise noted, as a clear demonstration of how whiteness is often the assumed default. He also notes the language change between enslavement and slavery and slaver, but Penningroth follows Tiya Miles's understanding of the terms, changing them to match the perspective of the person described or better represent the historic setting. (A Note on Terminology).

As with many other contemporary works of history that make use of the word 'hidden' in the title, Before the Movement is more focused on neglected, forgotten or less well know events. However a key point of the narrative is that much of the history has been deliberately hidden. One of the points of evidence is the usage of specific legal cases in law school casebooks that involved African American litigants but are presented with no details of their racial identity.

An excellent exploration of the archival record, both personal and legalistically that adds to our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement as a peak on the long road of Black self determination.

There is so much to unpack in this book and it really gives you a new perspective on black history and law. To think, black people were using the law before they were even recognized by it!

What I loved most about this book is how the author broke down the referenced cases into personal narratives, giving us insight into what exactly was happening and why.

When you get a chance spend some time with this book. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.