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

by Kate Masur

Much remains to be done. Yet the first civil rights movement can teach us a few important things about American history, politics, and law, dating back to the earliest years of the republic. The men and women of that movement looked at their flawed country and demanded something better. They unflinchingly attacked the enduring legacies of slavery in American life. They deplored racism in public policy. They sought due process and equal protection for everyone, everywhere. Members of the coalition did not always agree with one another, and they had their blind spots. Some were in the radical vanguard and others proceeded with great caution. Still, the agitators, petitioners, and politicians of the first civil rights movement built a coalition that pushed the principle of racial equality into the center of American life, demanding policy changes that would edge the nation closer to its most egalitarian promises. When they prevailed, it was often by slim margins. When they failed, they kept trying. When the Civil War provided an opening, they propelled their quest for justice onto the national stage and into the US Constitution. We are fortunate that they did.