Until Justice Be Done
America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction
by Kate Masur
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Pub Date Mar 23 2021 | Archive Date Feb 28 2021
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Description
A groundbreaking history of the antebellum movement for equal rights that reshaped the institutions of freedom after the Civil War.
The half century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over freedom as well as slavery: what were the arrangements of free society, especially for African Americans? Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted black codes that discouraged the settlement and restricted the basic rights of free black people. But claiming the equal-rights promises of the Declaration and the Constitution, a biracial movement arose to fight these racist state laws.
Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Its advocates battled in state legislatures, Congress, and the courts, and through petitioning, party politics and elections. They visited slave states to challenge local laws that imprisoned free blacks and sold them into slavery. Despite immovable white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, their vision became increasingly mainstream. After the Civil War, their arguments shaped the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, the pillars of our second founding.
About the Author: Kate Masur is a professor of history at Northwestern University. A finalist for the Lincoln Prize, she is author and editor of acclaimed books on the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781324005933 |
| PRICE | $32.00 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
Brandon W, Educator
Masur's book does a great job looking at a part of history that is often overlooked. We tend to think that, out of nowhere, an abolitionist fervor developed, leading to a civil war. This was then, according to this narrative, followed by a civil rights movement almost 100 years later.
Proof that this narrative is wrong can be found in these pages. For one, she argues that there was a structured movement towards equality, not just abolition, prior to the civil war; second, she always makes the case that it was the work of these early civil rights proponents that laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
A really in-depth shift of perspective that adds layers to the existing historiography. This is one of those books that cannot be compared to anything else, for it is in a category of its own.
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