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

Author: Kate Masur

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-03-23

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1324005947

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize Winner of the 2022 John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History One of NPR's Best Books of 2021 and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021 A groundbreaking history of the movement for equal rights that courageously battled racist laws and institutions, Northern and Southern, in the decades before the Civil War. The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws. They countered the states’ insistences that states were merely trying to maintain the domestic peace with the equal-rights promises they found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were pastors, editors, lawyers, politicians, ship captains, and countless ordinary men and women, and they fought in the press, the courts, the state legislatures, and Congress, through petitioning, lobbying, party politics, and elections. Long stymied by hostile white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, the movement’s ideals became increasingly mainstream in the 1850s, particularly among supporters of the new Republican party. When Congress began rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, Republicans installed this vision of racial equality in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. These were the landmark achievements of the first civil rights movement. Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois “black laws” helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day.

Neither Fugitive Nor Free
Neither Fugitive Nor Free

Author: Edlie L. Wong

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2009-07

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 0814794564

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Studies lawsuits to gain freedom for slaves on the grounds of their having traveled to free territory, starting with Somerset v. Stewart (England, 1772), Commonwealth v. Aves (Massachusetts, 1836), Dred Scott v. Sanford, and cases brought questioning the legitimacy of Negro Seamen Acts in the antebellum coastal South. These lawsuits and accounts of them are compared to fugitive slave narratives to shed light on both. The differing impact of freedom obtained from such suits for men and women (women could claim that their children were free, once they were judged free) is examined.

Southern Slaves in Free State Courts
Southern Slaves in Free State Courts

Author: Paul Finkelman

Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Published: 2012-11

Total Pages: 1704

ISBN-13: 1584777389

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Southern Slaves in Free State Courts: The Pamphlet Literature. New York: Garland, 1988. 3 Vols. 1,704 pp. With a New Introduction by Paul Finkelman. Reprinted 2007, 2013 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. Set ISBN-13: 9781584777380. Set ISBN-10:1584777389. Hardcover. New. 34 Pamphlets reprinted in fascimile, in 3 volumes, with a New Introduction by Paul Finkelman: 1. Francis Hargrave. An Argument in the Case of James Sommersett aNegro, Lately Determined by the Court of King's Bench: Wherein it is Attempted to Demonstrate the Present Unlawfulness of Domestic Slavery in England. To Which is Prefixed a State of the Case. London, 1772. 82pp. 2. Edward Long. Candid Reflections Upon the Judgement Lately Awarded by the Court of King's Bench, in Westminster-Hall, on What is Commonly Called the Negro Cause, by a Planter. London, 1772. 76 pp. 3. Britannia Libera, or a Defence of the Free State of Man in England, Against the Claim of Any Man There as a Slave. London, 1772. 47 pp. 4. Samuel Estwick. Considerations on the Negro Cause Commonly so Called, Addressed to the Right Honorable Lord Mansfield. London, 1763. [96] pp. 5. A Letter to Philo Africanus, Upon Slavery; In Answer to His of the 22nd of November, in the General Evening Post, Together With the Opinions of Sir John Strange, and Other Eminent Lawyers Upon This Subject, With the Sentence of Lord Mansfield, in the Case of Somerset and Knowles, 1772, With His Lordship's Explanation of That Opinion in 1786. London, 1788. 40 pp. 6. John Haggard. The Judgment of the Right Hon. Lord Stowell, Respecting the Slavery of the Mongrel Woman, Grace, On An Appeal From The Vice-Admirality Court of Antigua. London, 1827. [50] pp. 7. Considerations on Certain Remarks on the Negro Slavery and Abolition Questions, in Lord Stowell's Judgment in the Case of the Slave "Grace." By a Briton. Newcastle, 1827. 18 pp. 8. Case of the Slave-Child Med. Report of the Arguments of Counsel and of the Opinion of the Court, in the Case of Commonwealth vs. Aves;Tried and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Boston, 1836. 40 pp. Please contact us for a complete list of titles contained in these three volumes. Originally published as a part of the series Slavery, Race, and the American Legal System, 1700-1872, this set contains facsimiles of 34 rare pamphlets relating to court cases involving the status of slaves in non-slave jurisdictions, including Somerset v. Stewart (1772) and Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). As in the companion set Fugitive Slaves and American Courts, some pamphlets were part of the public debate over judicial decisions. Others used a case to promote the antislavery cause or, in some instances, support or justify slavery.