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

by Kate Masur

In the post–Civil War years, many northern white communities continued to do everything in their power, with or without the sanction of law, to prevent African Americans from moving in. Where African Americans did reside, whites often demanded separation in housing, schools, and recreational facilities. Yet regional distinctions remained tremendously significant. For decades before the Civil War, the free states had offered a climate in which Black and white people could coalesce in a movement for racial equality that made significant inroads into state and then national politics. Many of the same people lived on after the war, and their continuing efforts—and those of like-minded younger people coming of age in a new era—made it possible for African Americans in many locales to settle peacefully and to gain access to public schools, public accommodations, and political power.