Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights - Dylan C. Penningroth

The familiar story of civil rights goes something like this: Once, the American legal system was dominated by racist officials who shut Black people out and refused to recognize their basic human dignity. Then, starting in the 1940s, a few brave lawyers ventured south, bent on changing the law--and soon, everyday African Americans joined with them to launch the Civil Rights Movement. In Before the Movement , historian Dylan C. Penningroth overturns this story, demonstrating that Black people had long exercised the rights of everyday use, and that this lesser-known private-law tradition paved the way for the modern vision of civil rights. Well-versed in the law, Black people had used it to their advantage for nearly a century to shape how they worked, worshiped, learned, and loved. Based on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses, Before the Movement recovers a vision of Black life allied with, yet distinct from, the freedom struggle.