Participant Info

First Name
Kate
Last Name
Masur
Country
United States
State
IL
Affiliation
Northwestern University
Website URL
https://www.history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/kate-masur.html
Keywords
Civil War, Reconstruction, nineteenth-century politics, emancipation, anti-slavery movement, law, constitution, women
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Kate Masur is an historian of the nineteenth-century United States history whose work forces on questions of equality. She has written extensively on the Reconstruction era, including on the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.

Her book, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (W. W. Norton, 2021), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the John Phillip Reid Book Award from the American Society for Legal History, and the John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History.

Masur has also coauthored, with illustrator Liz Clarke, Freedom Was in Sight! A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, D.C., Region (UNC Press, 2024).

She coordinated the production of the web exhibit, Black Organizing in Pre-Civil War Illinois: Creating Community, Demanding Justice. Part of the Colored Conventions Project, this online exhibit highlights early Black communities and Black activism in Illinois and includes biographical profiles of 25 individual people.

Masur’s other published scholarship includes An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. (UNC Press, 2010), and, with Gregory Downs, The World the Civil War Made (UNC Press, 2015). She has consulted extensively with museums and arts organizations, including the National Constitution Center and the Newberry Library. She was part of the editorial team that created Reconstruction: The Official National Park Service Handbook, and she co-authored, with Downs, The Era of Reconstruction, 1861-1900, a National Historic Landmark Theme Study published in 2017. She was also a key consultant for the 2019 documentary, Reconstruction: America after the Civil War and appeared in the recent CNN film, Lincoln: Divided We Stand.

Masur was the 2023 faculty recipient of Northwestern’s Ver Steeg Award, which recognizes excellence in work with graduate students. She regularly consults with K-12 teachers and speaks with the media on topics including the Civil War and Reconstruction, Lincoln, the Constitution, and monuments and public memory. She has written historical commentary for the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post’s Made By History, and other outlets. She also teaches US women’s history and has written about abortion rights and federalism in US history. She and Downs are co-editors of the Journal of the Civil War Era, a scholarly journal that maintains a blog called Muster.

Kate Masur’s personal website is katemasur.com.

Recent Publications
Media Coverage
https://www.katemasur.com/news
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
19th century
Expertise by Topic
American Civil War, Emancipation, Law, Politics, Public History, Race, Rebellion & Revolution, Sexuality, Urban History, Women