Although the Pulitzer Prize for history went to a book on 18th Century Native American relations with English colonists and another on Cuba, Kate Masur’s new book on the civil rights movement that helped prepare the way for Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, the Civil Rights Acts of the Reconstruction Era, and the post-war 14th. and 15th Amendments was revealed as the sole finalist for the history prize. I have reviewed the Masur book and it is excellent. Here is what the New York Times said about it in its report on this year’s Pulitzers:
Finalist: “Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From the Revolution to Reconstruction,” by Kate Masur (W.W. Norton & Company)
This book looks at the painstaking fight for Black people’s rights and equality at a time when states’ rights had far more influence than federal law. “If this is a cleareyed book, it’s still a heartening one,” The Times’ critic Jennifer Szalai wrote. “Masur takes care to show not only the limitations of what was achieved at each step but also how even the smallest step could lead to another.”
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