In honor of Black History Month please join The William S. Boyd School of Law & UNLV Department of History for an evening with Professor Dylan C. Penningroth as he discusses 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 struggles.