Prize-winning historians Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction, and Dylan Penningroth, author of the new book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, explore the central role of African Americans in the struggle for justice and equality long before the social movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Kate Masur is the board of visitors 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. Her recent book, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
Dylan Penningroth is a professor of law and history at the University of California–Berkeley, where he currently serves as associate dean of the program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the MacArthur Foundation. His new book is Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction
- Dylan Penningroth, Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights
- National Constitution Center Interactive Constitution, Article IV, Section 2: Movement Of Persons Throughout the Union, Privileges and Immunities Clause
- National Constitution Center Interactive Constitution,14th Amendment Privileges or Immunities Clause
- Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South
- Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C
- Brief of Professors of History and Law as Amici Curia in Support of Respondents
Excerpt from the Interview
On lessons the Second Civil Rights Movement learned from the First Civil Rights Movement and what people can take away from the movement
Kate Masur: So as far as going back to the earlier civil rights era, I mean, I feel like one of the things that I really want to do, people remember Frederick Douglass and Frederick Douglass was part of this First Civil Rights Movement. But one of the things I wanted to do in my book is put a whole other kind of cast of characters on our radar. There were so many black Americans who were involved in this struggle, who people should know about. People ... Somebody ... John Jones, the most famous black Chicagoan of that period, who spent 20 years trying to get the black laws of Illinois repealed. A man named David Jenkins, who was really important to the Ohio Movement.
And then also the white people who joined this movement, who helped fight to bring down those racist laws of the Midwest who pushed ahead for the nationalization of the idea of ... racial equality and civil rights, and ultimately in voting rights. I thought these stories were really important to recoup, in part because they form a longer trajectory of the story of fights for racial equality and racial justice that I think it can only help us to really know the extent of those histories and also the extent of the American story of white opposition to racial justice.
Jeffrey Rosen: Wonderful. Thank you, thank you so much for that. Dylan Penningroth, last word to you in this great discussion. As you sum up the teachings of your wonderful new book what should all of us learn from the hidden history of the Blacks Civil Rights Movement?
Dylan Penningroth: I guess I'd point to two things that stand out for me after doing the research for this book. I guess the first one is just a really deep sense of appreciation for the diversity of black life that goes hand in hand with, is intertwined with, the commonality of racial oppression. That I think is something that I was interested in from the start, and my research left me with an even deeper appreciation for.
I guess the second one is just to, I've come away with, and I hope that readers will find that the law, we think, when we think about this thing called the law, that it's not just one thing. I think it's often tempting, especially when thinking about black people and law to fall into the trap of thinking that it's all about the Supreme Court. What's the court going to do next week? Will Congress ever pass a law on the subject?
But it's not, the law is not just one thing. And I think that's something that Kate's book brings out beautifully. The law is Brett Kavanaugh and it's also your local county judge. It's also true, I think that the law enables many things and closes off other things. So for example, the law enables white supremacy, but it also enables, as I show in my book, a black patriarchy. Black men at various points in the story take advantage of their rights, their civil rights, to impose their vision of freedom on black women who are, after all, the majority of members in most churches at that time. And so you get these really interesting tensions that recur again and again.
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