{"product_id":"before-the-movement-the-hidden-history-of-black-civil-rights","title":"Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\"Penningroth's conclusions emerge from an epic research agenda....\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eBefore the Movement\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003epresents an original and provocative account of how civil law was experienced by Black citizens and how their 'legal lives' changed over time . . . [an] ambitious, stimulating, and provocative book.\" ―Eric Foner,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Beveridge Award, American Historical Association\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Littleton-Griswold Prize, American Historical Association\u003cbr\u003eFinalist for the Cundill History Prize\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Order of the Coif Book Award\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the James Willard Hurst Prize, Law and Society Association\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the John Philip Reid Award, American Society for Legal History\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Charles Sydnor Award, Southern Historical Association\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Merle Curti Social History Award, Organization of American Historians\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Ellis W. Hawley Prize, Organization of American Historians\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Scribes Book Award\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Phi Beta Kappa\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize, Columbia Journalism School\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eA prize-winning scholar draws on astonishing new research to demonstrate how Black people used the law to their advantage long before the Civil Rights Movement.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe familiar story of civil rights goes like this: once, America’s legal system shut Black people out and refused to recognize their rights, their basic human dignity, or even their very lives. When lynch mobs gathered, police and judges often closed their eyes, if they didn’t join in. For Black people, law was a hostile, fearsome power to be avoided whenever possible. Then, starting in the 1940s, a few brave lawyers ventured south, bent on changing the law. Soon, ordinary African Americans, awakened by Supreme Court victories and galvanized by racial justice activists, launched the civil rights movement.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eBefore the Movement\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, acclaimed historian Dylan C. Penningroth brilliantly revises the conventional story. Drawing on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses across the nation, Penningroth reveals that African Americans, far from being ignorant about law until the middle of the twentieth century, have thought about, talked about, and used it going as far back as even the era of slavery. They dealt constantly with the laws of property, contract, inheritance, marriage and divorce, of associations (like churches and businesses and activist groups), and more. By exercising these “rights of everyday use,” Penningroth demonstrates, they made Black rights seem unremarkable. And in innumerable subtle ways, they helped shape the law itself―the laws all of us live under today.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePenningroth’s narrative, which stretches from the last decades of slavery to the 1970s, partly traces the history of his own family. Challenging accepted understandings of Black history framed by relations with white people, he puts Black people at the center of the story―their loves and anger and loneliness, their efforts to stay afloat, their mistakes and embarrassments, their fights, their ideas, their hopes and disappointments, in all their messy humanness. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eBefore the Movement\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is an account of Black legal lives that looks beyond the Constitution and the criminal justice system to recover a rich, broader vision of Black life―a vision allied with, yet distinct from, “the freedom struggle.”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e42 illustrations\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dylan C. Penningroth","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45497520488624,"sku":null,"price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0528\/6821\/9056\/files\/61mwkEAuvaL._SL1200.jpg?v=1785643294","url":"https:\/\/www.umojabooks.com\/products\/before-the-movement-the-hidden-history-of-black-civil-rights","provider":"Umoja House ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}