Until Justice Be Done, Kate Masur
Until Justice Be Done, Kate Masur
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Until Justice Be Done
America's First Civil Rights Movement from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Author: Kate Masur

Narrator: Allyson Johnson

Unabridged: 14 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Kalorama

Published: 06/22/2021


Synopsis

A groundbreaking history of the movement for equal rights that courageously battled racist laws and institutions, north and south, in the decades before the Civil War.

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states, claiming the authority to maintain the domestic peace, enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling their boundaries and restricted the rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws. They countered the states' insistence on local control with the equal-rights promises they found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Long stymied by hostile white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, the movement's vision became increasingly mainstream in the 1850s, particularly among supporters of the new Republican party. When Congress began rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, Republicans installed this vision of racial equality in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. These were the landmark achievements of the first civil rights movement.


About Kate Masur

Kate Masur is professor of history at Northwestern University. A finalist for the Lincoln Prize, she is the author of An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah on May 10, 2021

I did not understand the fundamental difference between the anti-slavery movement and the Civil Rights movement until I read this book. What Masur shows us is that Black people who were not enslaved were involved in a political and legal movement that continues to this day fighting for equality with......more

Goodreads review by Julie on November 19, 2021

Loved this. Masur tells a great story of civil rights activism by Black men and women and their white allies in the early 19th c. Much of the story is focused on free states, especially in the Midwest, and efforts to fight anti-Black laws. The book shines a new light on the decades long making of th......more

Goodreads review by Roger on November 23, 2021

Until Justice is an outstanding study of Civil Rights and citizenship agitation by Blacks and abolitionists in the United States through the end of Reconstruction. It is thoroughly grounded in her understanding of the Constitution, manuscript, and periodical sources of the period, as well as the mos......more

Goodreads review by Joseph on March 09, 2022

A thorough and interesting account of civil rights activism mostly in the northern states from the Revolution to the Reconstruction era. Masur focuses on what was then the Northwest, states that did not have slavery because of the NOrthwest Ordinance but were often vehemently racist. This first CR m......more

Goodreads review by Edward on April 26, 2021

What if the history books have all been WRONG? This ESSENTIAL new book uncovers a forgotten chapter of American history-the continuous and strong efforts by free African-Americans to secure equal rights and the right to vote from the beginning of our Republic. By petitioning the state and federal le......more