Black Civil Rights before the Civil Rights Movement

Unsung History

The beginning of the Civil Rights Movement is often dated to sometime in the middle of the 1950s, but the roots of it stretch back much further. The NAACP, which calls itself “the nation's largest and most widely recognized civil rights organization,” was founded near the beginning of the 20th Century, on February 12, 1909. As today’s guest demonstrates, though, Black Americans were exercising civil rights far earlier than that, in many cases even before the Civil War.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Dylan C. Penningroth is a professor of law and history and Associate Dean of the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California–Berkeley and author of Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Hopeful Piano,” by Oleg Kyrylkovv, available via the Pixabay license.

The episode image is “Spectators and witnesses on second day of Superior Court during trial of automobile accident case during court week in Granville County Courthouse, Oxford, North Carolina,” by Marion Post Wolcott, photographed in 1939; the photograph is in the public domain and available via the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

Additional Sources:

• “8 Key Laws That Advanced Civil Rights,” by Mehrunnisa Wani, History.com, January 26, 2022.
• “The Reconstruction Amendments: Official Documents as Social History,” by Eric Foner, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
• “(1865) Reconstruction Amendments, 1865-1870,” BlackPast.
• “14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868),” U.S. National Archives.
• “March 27, 1866: Veto Message on Civil Rights Legislation,” Andrew Johnson, UVA Miller Center.
• “Andrew Johnson and the veto of the Civil Rights Bill,” National Park Service.
• “Grant signs KKK Act into law, April 20, 1871,” by Andrew Glass, Politico, April 20, 2019.
• “Looking back at the Ku Klux Klan Act,” by Nicholas Mosvick, National Constitution Center, April 20, 2021.
• “Reconstruction and Its Aftermath,” Library of Congress The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship.

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