Description:

You are invited to a lunch talk with Professor Dylan Penningroth from the University of California-Berkeley. His talk with draw on his book, Before The Movement - The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights. Please do RSVP.

Wednesday, October 2 / 12:00pm - 1:50pm / Lunch at 12:00pm / Lecture at 12:30pm

Where: Harris Hall, Rm. 108

Book summary

Through an empirically-rich historical investigation into the changing meaning of civil rights, Before the Movement seeks to change the way we think about Black history itself. Weaving together a variety of sources—from state and federal appellate courts to long-forgotten documents found in county courthouse basements, from family interviews to church records—the book tries to reveal how African Americans thought about, talked about, and used the law long before the marches of the 1960s. In a world that denied their constitutional rights, Black people built lives for themselves through common law “rights of everyday use.” Before the Movement recovers a rich vision of Black life―a vision allied with, yet distinct from, the freedom struggle.

Author’s Bio

Dylan C. Penningroth is Professor of Law and Morrison Professor of History at the University of California–Berkeley. He specializes in African American history and legal history. His first book, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South, published by the University of North Carolina Press, won the 2004 Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award from the Organization of American Historians. His second book, Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (Liveright 2023) won the Hurst Book Prize, the Merle Curti Social History Award, the Ellis Hawley Award, the David Langum Prize, was shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award, and longlisted for the Cundill History Prize. His articles have appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, and TIME. Penningroth has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the MacArthur Foundation. He is currently serving as Associate Dean of the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at Berkeley Law School.