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

From the Revolution to the Civil War, conflicts over racial equality as well as slavery gathered force. Beginning in 1803, many free states, claiming authority to protect the public good, restricted Black Americans' rights to testify in court, move freely, work, vote, and attend school. But courageous Black activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, built a movement to fight those racist policies. Until Justice Be Done is a magisterial history of the country's first equal rights movement and its landmark achievements: the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment.