The Forgotten Years of the Civil Rights Movement

This week we are sharing an episode from our companion podcast, Live at the National Constitution Center. In this episode, 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 Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

Resources: 

• Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (2022) 
• Dylan Penningroth, Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (2023) 
• Article IV, Section 2: Movement Of Persons Throughout the Union, Privileges and Immunities Clause, National Constitution Center’s Interactive Constitution 
• 14th Amendment Privileges or Immunities Clause, National Constitution Center’s Interactive Constitution 
• Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South (2003) 
• Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C (2010) 
• Brief of Professors of History and Law as Amici Curia in Support of Respondents, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard and UNC 

Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org.

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You can find transcripts for each episode on the podcast pages in our Media Library.