Until Justice Be Done

By Kate Masur,

Book cover of Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Book description

The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote,…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Until Justice Be Done as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is a groundbreaking analysis of how free Blacks and women fought for racial equality before the Civil War and how that fight shaped the Fourteenth Amendment. Professor Masur focuses on states such as Ohio and Illinois where laws discriminating against blacks were commonplace. The political effort to repeal these laws brought together an unprecedented coalition that included many future leaders of Reconstruction, but the critical point is that the people who were the objects of the discrimination found ways to make their voices heard even though they could not vote.

From Gerard's list on constitutional history.

The African American struggle for justice and equality has been a driving engine for making our country a more just and equal place. This book tells the gripping story of the movement for racial equality from the founding of the republic through the Civil War. This was a fight against enslavement, but it was also a fight against racist laws and institutions, in the North and the South, that deprived people of equality and full citizenship based on the color of their skin. This is a bold and sweeping account of the first great civil rights movement.

From Charles' list on the struggle for equality in the USA.

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