Hello friends, welcome and delighted to have you join me today.

My guest is Dylan Paddingroth, who has a new book out called Before the Movement, which

is an absolutely fascinating take on Black history and how African-American communities

used the law in ways that enabled the civil rights movement before it even got started.

So I can't wait to have you listen to this conversation, let's dive in.

I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

Well I am very excited to be welcoming Dylan Paddingroth to the show today.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

I am delighted to be talking about your new book before the movement.

When I saw it come out, I immediately was excited to read it.

And I really learned so much.

It wasn't just a, here's a list of facts of things that happened before the civil rights

movement, but it really explored themes that I think are so important to keep in mind

when we're studying history, we're studying Black history, we're studying the history

of the civil rights movement.

And so I would love to have you give the listener who maybe hasn't read before the movement

yet, just a general overview of what your new book is about.

So my book is a history that tells a story about how African-Americans used law and talked

about law and thought about law for almost two centuries from roughly the last decades

before the end of slavery through the 1970s.

And what I try to do in the book is to tell a story of Black legal lives that pulls back

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