The 1967 Arab–Israeli War rocketed the question of Israel and Palestine onto the front pages of American newspapers. Black Power activists saw Palestinians as a kindred people of color, waging the same struggle for freedom and justice as themselves. Soon concerns over the Arab–Israeli conflict spread across mainstream black politics and into the heart of the civil rights movement itself. Black Power and Palestine uncovers why so many African Americans―notably Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali, among others―came to support the Palestinians or felt the need to respond to those who did.

Americans first heard pro-Palestinian sentiments in public through the black freedom struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. Michael R. Fischbach uncovers this hidden history of the Arab–Israeli conflict's role in African American activism and the ways that distant struggle shaped the domestic fight for racial equality. Black Power's transnational connections between African Americans and Palestinians deeply affected U.S. black politics, animating black visions of identity well into the late 1970s. Black Power and Palestine allows those black voices to be heard again today.

In chronicling this story, Fischbach reveals much about how American peoples of color create political strategies, a sense of self, and a place within U.S. and global communities. The shadow cast by events of the 1960s and 1970s continues to affect the United States in deep, structural ways. This is the first book to explore how conflict in the Middle East shaped the American civil rights movement.

“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African-American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.” — Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country’s history. Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—these writers used words to create a livable world—a "home" —for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society. It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a community formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal sub-human bondage, transformed itself through the word into a community whose foundational definition was based on overcoming one of history’s most pernicious lies. This collective act of resistance and transcendence is at the heart of its self-definition as a "community." Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, powerful, diverse culture formed by people who have often disagreed markedly about what it means to be "Black," and about how best to shape a usable past out of the materials at hand to call into being a more just and equitable future. This is the epic story of how, through essays and speeches, novels, plays, and poems, a long line of creative thinkers has unveiled the contours of—and resisted confinement in—the "black box" inside which this "nation within a nation" has been assigned, willy nilly, from the nation’s founding through to today. This is a book that records the compelling saga of the creation of a people.

From its humble origins at house parties in the Bronx, where DJs mixed old records to create new sounds, charismatic MCs let their clever lyrics flow, and B-boys and B-girls pioneered inventive dance moves, hip-hop quickly became a musical and cultural revolution.

In this volume of History Comics, we follow Aaliyah, a hip-hop superfan who is about to get a lesson in all things “old school” courtesy of her dad. The pair take a day trip to the Bronx, where Aaliyah discovers the many unsung
heroes who helped create the foundations of hip-hop. So get ready to drop the beat, bust a move, and get down with some fresh rap knowledge!

Twenty Dollars and Change places Harriet Tubman’s life and legacy in a long tradition of resistance, illuminating the ongoing struggle to realize a democracy in which her emancipatory vision prevails.

America is in the throes of a historic reckoning with racism, with the battle for control over official narratives at ground zero. Across the country, politicians, city councils, and school boards are engaged in a highly polarized debate about whose accomplishments should be recognized, and whose point of view should be included in the telling of America’s history.

In Twenty Dollars and Change, political scientist Clarence Lusane, author of the acclaimed The Black History of the White House, writes from a basic premise: Racist historical narratives and pervasive social inequities are inextricably linked—changing one can transform the other. Taking up the debate over the future of the twenty-dollar bill, Lusane uses the question of Harriet Tubman vs. Andrew Jackson as a lens through which to view the current state of our nation's ongoing reckoning with the legacies of slavery and foundational white supremacy. He places the struggle to confront unjust social conditions in direct connection with the push to transform our public symbols, making it plain that any choice of whose life deserves to be remembered and honored is a direct reflection of whose basic rights are deemed worthy of protection, and whose are not.

From John Hope Franklin, America's foremost African American historian, comes this groundbreaking analysis of slave resistance and escape. A sweeping panorama of plantation life before the Civil War, this book reveals that slaves frequently rebelled against their masters and ran away from their plantations whenever they could.

For generations, important aspects about slave life on the plantations of the American South have remained shrouded. Historians thought, for instance, that slaves were generally pliant and resigned to their roles as human chattel, and that racial violence on the plantation was an aberration. In this precedent setting book, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, significant numbers of slaves did in fact frequently rebel against their masters and struggled to attain their freedom. By surveying a wealth of documents, such as planters' records, petitions to county courts and state legislatures, and local newspapers, this book shows how slaves resisted, when, where, and how they escaped, where they fled to, how long they remained in hiding, and how they survived away from the plantation. Of equal importance, it examines the reactions of the white slaveholding class, revealing how they marshaled considerable effort to prevent runaways,
meted out severe punishments, and established patrols to hunt down escaped slaves.

Reflecting a lifetime of thought by our leading authority in African American history, this book provides the key to truly understanding the relationship between slaveholders and the runaways who challenged the system--illuminating as never before the true nature of the South's "most peculiar institution."

This book shows that the first generation of Africans taken to English and Dutch colonies before 1660 were captured by pirates from these countries from slave ships coming from Kongo and Angola. This region had embraced Christianity and elements of Western culture, such as names and some material culture, the result of a long period of diplomatic, political, and military interaction with the Portuguese. This background gave them an important role in shaping the way slavery, racism, and African-American culture would develop in English and Dutch colonies throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The black experience in America-starting from its origins in western Africa up to 1961-is examined in this seminal study from a prominent African American figure. The entire historical timeline of African Americans is addressed, from the Colonial period through the civil rights upheavals of the late 1950s to 1961, the time of publication. "Before the Mayflower" grew out of a series of articles Bennett published in Ebony magazine regarding "the trials and triumphs of a group of Americans whose roots in the American soil are deeper than the roots of the Puritans who arrived on the celebrated Mayflower a year after a 'Dutch man of war' deposited twenty Negroes at Jamestown." Bennett's history is infused with a desire to set the record straight about black contributions to the Americas and about the powerful Africans of antiquity. While not a fresh history, it provides a solid synthesis of current historical research and a lively writing style that makes it accessible and engaging reading. After discussing the contributions of Africans to the ancient world, "Before the Mayflower" tells the history of "the other Americans," how they came to America, and what happened to them when they got here. The book is comprehensive and detailed, providing little-known and often overlooked facts about the lives of black folks through slavery, Reconstruction, America's wars, the Great Depression, and the civil rights movement. The book includes a useful time line and some fascinating archival images.

The essential oral history of hip-hop, from its origins on the playgrounds of the Bronx to its reign as the most powerful force in pop culture

The music that would come to be known as hip-hop was born at a party in the Bronx in the summer of 1973. Now, fifty years later, it’s the most popular music genre in America. Just as jazz did in the first half of the twentieth century, hip-hop and its groundbreaking DJs and artists—nearly all of them people of color from some of America’s most overlooked communities—pushed the boundaries of music to new frontiers.
 
And yet, the stories of many hip-hop pioneers are at risk of being lost forever. Now, in The Come Up, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Abrams offers the most comprehensive account so far of hip-hop’s rise. In more than 300 interviews conducted over three years, Abrams has captured the stories of the DJs, executives, producers, and artists who both witnessed and themselves forged the history of hip-hop. Masterfully combining these voices into a symphonic narrative, Abrams traces how the genre grew out of the resourcefulness of a neglected population in the South Bronx, and from there how it flowed into the city’s other boroughs, and beyond—from electrifying live gatherings onto radio and vinyl, below to the Mason-Dixon line, to the West Coast through gangster rap and G-funk, and then across generations.
 
Abrams has on record Grandmaster Caz detailing hip-hop’s infancy, Edward “Duke Bootee” Fletcher describing the origins of “The Message,” DMC narrating his role in introducing hip-hop to the mainstream, Ice Cube recounting N.W.A’s breakthrough and breakup, Kool Moe Dee recounting his Grammys boycott, and countless more key players. Throughout, Abrams conveys with singular vividness the drive, the stakes, and the relentless creativity that ignited one of the greatest revolutions in modern music.

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ETAN THOMAS, an eleven-year NBA veteran and lifelong advocate for social justice, weaves together his personal experiences with police violence and white supremacy with multiple interviews of family members of victims of police brutality like exonerated Central Park Five survivor Raymond Santana and Rodney King’s daughter Lora Dene King; as well as activist athletes and other public figures such as Steph Curry, Chuck D, Isiah Thomas, Sue Bird, Jake Tapper, Jemele Hill, Stan Van Gundy, Kyle Korver, Mark Cuban, Rick Strom, and many more.

Thomas speaks with retired police officers about their efforts to change policing, and white allies about their experiences with privilege and their ability to influence other white people. Thomas also examines the history of racism, white supremacy, and the prevalence of both in the current moment. He looks at the origins of white supremacy in the US, dating back to the country’s inception, and explores how it was interwoven into Christianity--interviewing leading voices both in and outside of the church. Finally, with prominent voices in the media and education, Thomas discusses the continued cultivation of these injustices in American society.

Police Brutality and White Supremacy demands accountability and justice for those responsible for and impacted by police violence and terror. It offers practical solutions to work against the promotion of white supremacy in law enforcement, Christianity, early education, and across the public sphere.

Featuring original interviews with: Steph Curry, Chuck D, Yamiche Alcindor, Isiah Thomas, Jemele Hill, Craig Hodges, Stan Van Gundy, Mark Cuban, Jake Tapper, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Sue Bird, Kyle Korver, Rick Strom, Cenk Uygur, Tim Wise, Chris Broussard, Breanna Stewart, Rex Chapman, Stephen Jackson, Kori Mccoy, Lora Dene King, Chikesia Clemons, Raymond Santana, Alissa Findley, Amber And Ashley Carr, Michelle And Ashley Monterrosa, Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., Abiodun Oyewole, Marc Lamont Hill, Officer Carlton Berkley, Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr., Officer Joe Ested, Captain Sonia Pruitt, and Bishop Talbert Swan.

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Michael Eric Dyson dives deep into the true meaning of Barack Obama’s historic presidency and its effects on the changing landscape of race and blackness in America. How has race shaped Obama’s identity, career, and presidency? What can we learn from his major race speeches about his approach to racial conflict and the black criticism it provokes?

Dyson was granted an exclusive interview with the president for this book, and Obama’s own voice shines through. Along with interviews with Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and others, this intimate access provides a unique depth to this engrossing analysis of the nation’s first black president, and how race shapes and will shape our understanding of his achievements and failures alike.

Acclaimed historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the remarkable story of ex-slave Callie House who, seventy years before the civil-rights movement, demanded reparations for ex-slaves. A widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five, House (1861-1928) went on to fight for African American pensions based on those offered to Union soldiers, brilliantly targeting $68 million in taxes on seized rebel cotton and demanding it as repayment for centuries of unpaid labor. Here is the fascinating story of a forgotten civil rights crusader: a woman who emerges as a courageous pioneering activist, a forerunner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An explosive and absorbing discussion of race, politics, and the history of American sports.”—Ebony
 
From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built.

Provocative and controversial, Rhoden’s $40 Million Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. Rhoden reveals that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations—where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings—to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. He details the “conveyor belt” that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they’re cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason.

The power black athletes have today is as limited as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. The primary difference is, today’s shackles are invisible.

Praise for Forty Million Dollar Slaves
 
“A provocative, passionate, important, and disturbing book.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Brilliant . . . a beautifully written, complex, and rich narrative.”—Washington Post Book World
 
“A powerful call for more black athletes to give back to their communities.”—Los Angeles Times

As the popularity of women’s basketball burgeons, Karra Porter reminds us in Mad Seasons that today’s Women’s National Basketball Association, or WNBA had its origins in a ragtag league twenty years earlier. Porter tells the story of the Women’s Professional Basketball League WBL, which pioneered a new era of women’s sports.

Formed in 1978, the league included the not-so-storied Dallas Diamonds, Chicago Hustle, and Minnesota Fillies. Porter’s book takes us into the heart of the WBL as teams struggled with nervous sponsors, an uncertain fan base, and indifferent sportswriters. Despite bouncing paychecks, having to sleep on floors, and being stranded on road games, the players endured and thrived.

Karra Porter brings to life the pioneers of the WBL: “Machine Gun” Molly Bolin, who set lasting scoring records—then faced an historic custody battle because of her basketball career; Connie Kunzmann, a popular player whose murder rocked the league; Liz Silcott, whose remarkable talents masked deeper problems off the court; Ann Meyers, who went from an NBA tryout to the league she had rebuffed; Nancy Lieberman, whose flashy play and marketing savvy were unlike anything the women's game had ever seen.

A story of hardship and sacrifice, but also of dedication and love for the game, Mad Seasons brings the WBL back to life and shows in colorful detail how this short-lived but pioneering league ignited the imagination of a new generation of female athletes and fans.

The Black Fives is a groundbreaking, timely history of the largely unknown early days of Black basketball, bringing to life the trailblazing players, teams, and impresarios who pioneered the sport.

“For a game that has meant so much to the world, Claude Johnson somehow presents a definitive account for a part of basketball’s history that for so long was kept away from us. Claude is a superhero storyteller, and this book is a bona fide superpower.” —Justin Tinsley, author of It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him

From the introduction of the game of basketball to Black communities on a wide scale in 1904 to the racial integration of the NBA in 1950, dozens of African American teams were founded and flourished. This period, known as the Black Fives Era (teams at the time were often called “fives”), was a time of pioneering players and managers. They battled discrimination and marginalization and created culturally rich, socially meaningful events. But despite headline-making rivalries between big-city clubs, barnstorming tours across the country, innovative business models, and undeniably talented players, this period is almost entirely unknown to basketball fans.

Claude Johnson has made it his mission to change that. An advocate fiercely committed to our history, for more than two decades Johnson has conducted interviews, mined archives, collected artifacts, and helped to preserve this historically important African American experience that otherwise would have been lost. This essential book is the result of his work, a landmark narrative history that braids together the stories of these forgotten pioneers and rewrites our understanding of the story of basketball.

A timely groundbreaking book in the vein of Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, one of the country's foremost voices on reparations, offers a radical and vital new framework going beyond the current debate over this controversial issue.

For over a century, the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans has divided the United States. However, while the iconic phrase "40 acres and a mule" encapsulates the general notion of reparations, history has proven that the damages of enslavement on the African American community far exceed what a plot of land or a check could repair.  

While reparations are being widely debated once again, current petitions to redress the lasting and collateral consequences of slavery have not moved past economic solutions, even though we know that monetary redress alone is not enough. Not only would many wounds be left unhealed, but relying solely on economics would continue a legacy of neglect for African Americans. In this thoughtful and sure-to-be controversial book, Marcus Anthony Hunter argues that a radical shift in our outlook is necessary; we need more comprehensive solutions such as those currently sought by today's educators, historians, activists, organizers, Afrofuturists, and socially conscious citizens. 

In Radical Reparations, this conversation shifter, social justice pioneer, change agent, and inventor of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which redefined the global conversation on racism and social justice, offers a unifying and unconventional framework for achieving holistic and comprehensive healing of African American communities. Hunter reimagines reparations through a profound new lens as he defines seven types of compensation: political, intellectual, legal, economic, spatial, social, and spiritual, using analysis of historical documents, comparative international cases, and speculative parables. 

Profound and revolutionary, trenchant and timely, Radical Reparations provides a compellingly and provocatively reframing of reparations' past, present, and future, offering a unifying way forward for us all.

In this joyous collection of essays about historically Black colleges and universities, alumni both famous and up-and-coming write testimonials about the schools and experiences that shaped their lives and made them who they are today.

Edited by the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, Ayesha Rascoe—with a distinguished and diverse set of contributors including Oprah Winfrey, Stacey Abrams, and Branford Marsalis, HBCU Made illuminates and celebrates the experience of going to a historically Black college or university. This book is for proud alumni, their loved ones, current students, and anyone considering an HBCU.

The first book featuring famous alumni sharing personal accounts of the Black college experience, HBCU Made offers a series of warm, moving, and candid personal essays about the schools that nurtured and educated them. The contributors write about how they chose their HBCU, their first days on campus, the dynamic atmosphere of classes where students were constantly challenged to do their best, the professors who devoted themselves to the students, the marching bands and majorettes and their rigorous training.

For some, the choice to attend an HBCU was an easy one, as they followed in the footsteps of their parents or siblings. For others, it was a carefully considered step away from a predominantly white institution to be educated in a place where they would never have to justify their presence. And for some authors here, it was an HBCU that took them in and cared for them like family, often helping them to overcome a rough patch.

For all, the pride in their choice is abundantly clear. HBCU Made is a perfect gift for each generation of prospective students and brand new alumni to come.

This groundbreaking body of comics journalism collects Anderson's entire biography of the renowned civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Over a decade in the making, the saga has been praised for its vivid recreation of one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history and for its accuracy in depicting the personal and public lives of King, from his birth to his assassination. King probes the life story of one of America's greatest public figures with an unflinchingly critical eye, casting King as an ambitious, dichotomous figure deserving of his place in history but not above moral sacrifice to get there. Anderson's expressionistic visual style is wrought with dramatic energy; panels evoke a painterly attention to detail but juxtapose with one another in such a way as to propel King's story with cinematic momentum. Anderson's successful use of the graphic novel to tell a major work of nonfiction has drawn favorable comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Joe Sacco's Palestine, and Osamu Tezuka's Adolph.

King not only recreates the major events in King's public life, but chronicles the daily, rough-and-tumble, behind-the-scenes political maneuverings and strategic compromises that were required to mobilize millions of people toward a common goal. His internal debates with Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson and his hardball negotiations with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson are dramatized. Anderson's achievement is not merely a political biography filled with names and dates, but a fully rounded portrait of a fallible human engaged in a superhuman effort his fears, his doubts, his relationship with his wife Coretta King, and his children are compassionately and truthfully rendered.

Anderson's visual approach includes the use of photographs, realistic portraiture, and expressionistic imagery alternating between stark black and white chiaroscuro and painterly full color. The dialogue is unflinchingly naturalistic and accurately reflects the moral urgency and labyrinthine political and practical complexities that King was navigating, from his deeply felt, personal commitment to a public cause to the wider political eruptions the country was experiencing. This is a respectful, unsparing, truthful biography of a man and his times that captures the moral and political gravitas of the cause as well as its human dimension. A major work of comics, depicting a major work of history.

This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history.

Starting with the earliest references in Egyptian and Assyrian texts, Nur Masalha explores how Palestine and its Palestinian identity have evolved over thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the present day. Drawing on a rich body of sources and the latest archaeological evidence, Masalha shows how Palestine’s multicultural past has been distorted and mythologised by Biblical lore and the Israel–Palestinian conflict.

In the process, Masalha reveals that the concept of Palestine, contrary to accepted belief, is not a modern invention or one constructed in opposition to Israel, but rooted firmly in ancient past. Palestine represents the authoritative account of the country's history.

A sweeping yet personal overview of the Latino population of America, drawn from hundreds of interviews and prodigious research that emphasizes the diversity and little-known history of our largest and fastest-growing minority.

LatinoLand is an exceptional, all-encompassing overview of Hispanic America based on personal interviews, deep research, and Marie Arana’s life experience as a Latina. At present, Latinos comprise 20 percent of the US population, a number that is growing. By 2050, census reports project that one in every three Americans will claim Latino heritage.

But Latinos are not a monolith. They do not represent a single group. The largest numbers are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Cubans. Each has a different cultural and political background. Puerto Ricans, for example, are US citizens, whereas some Mexican Americans never immigrated because the US-Mexico border shifted after the US invasion of 1848, incorporating what is now the entire southwest of the United States. Cubans came in two great waves: those escaping communism in the early years of Castro, many of whom were professionals and wealthy, and those permitted to leave in the Mariel boat lift twenty years later, representing some of the poorest Cubans, including prisoners.

As LatinoLand shows, Latinos were some of the earliest immigrants to what is now the US—some of them arriving in the 1500s. They are racially diverse—a random fusion of White, Black, Indigenous, and Asian. Once overwhelmingly Catholic, they are becoming increasingly Protestant and Evangelical. They range from domestic workers and day laborers to successful artists, corporate CEOs, and US senators. Formerly solidly Democratic, they now vote Republican in growing numbers. They are as varied culturally as any immigrants from Europe or Asia.

Marie Arana draws on her own experience as the daughter of an American mother and Peruvian father who came to the US at age nine, straddling two worlds, as many Latinos do. LatinoLand unabashedly celebrates Latino resilience and character and shows us why we must understand the fastest-growing minority in America.

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Uncovers the often overlooked stories of the women who shaped the black freedom struggle

The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman?

From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle.

Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernández, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.

A 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.

The familiar story of civil rights goes something like this: Once, the American legal system was dominated by racist officials who shut Black people out and refused to recognize their basic human dignity. Then, starting in the 1940s, a few brave lawyers ventured south, bent on changing the law—and soon, everyday African Americans joined with them to launch the Civil Rights Movement. In Before the Movement, historian Dylan C. Penningroth overturns this story, demonstrating that Black people had long exercised “the rights of everyday use,” and that this lesser-known private-law tradition paved the way for the modern vision of civil rights. Well-versed in the law, Black people had used it to their advantage for nearly a century to shape how they worked, worshiped, learned, and loved. Based on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses, Before the Movement recovers a vision of Black life allied with, yet distinct from, “the freedom struggle.”