Professor Kate Masur discusses her new book on NPR’s Morning Edition: ‘Until Justice Be Done’ Examines Northern Free States’ So-Called Black Laws

In March of 2021, History Professor Kate Masur published her new book, Until Justice Be Done. The work examines the restrictive codes called Black laws or Black codes that constrained the lives of Black people in northern free states, where slavery was banned.

Masur spoke about the book with Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Edition, where she discussed the fight against the Midwestern Black laws and the connections to mobilizations for racial justice today.

Listen to the interview:

An excerpt from the interview:

“I went back and forth a lot about the similarities and differences about protest and organizing during the summer of 2020, when George Floyd’s murder and all kinds of other disturbing events associated with police violence were very much on the table,” Masur said.

“And we saw in particular Black-led organizing, in which white people participated in larger numbers than we had probably ever seen before, and thinking about questions about, first of all, Black leadership around questions of American democracy and the ways that African Americans have often in history been the most prominent voices in conceiving of American democracy in the broadest possible terms. And also the ways that white people come to consciousness around these issues, where they might not have ever thought very much about racial injustice before,” Masur explains.

Read more excerpts from the interview here.