3. The Price of Democracy

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we will examine the price that some leaders of the Civil Rights Movement paid to establish a successful movement. In particular, we will focus on: (i) the story of Joseph A. DeLaine; (ii) early violence in the Civil Rights Movement, including the killing of Harry T. Moore; (iii) the 1955 killings, including Lamar Smith, George W. Lee, and Emmett Till; (iv) the killing of Vernon Dahmer and how this best represents the price that early civil rights leaders paid for voting rights.

Course

In this course, Professor Charles M. Payne (Rutgers University) explores the early steps made in the Civil Rights Movement from 1940-60. In the first module, we explore how the Civil Rights Movement evolved in the years before the 1950s. After this, we discuss the traditional origin story of the Civil Rights Movement in more detail. Then, we examine the price that some leaders of the Civil Rights Movement paid to establish a successful movement. In the penultimate module, we explore the career of one of the most crucial civil rights leaders - Ella Baker. In the final module, we offer some concluding remarks about the early Civil Right Movement.

Lecturer

Professor Charles M. Payne is the Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Rutgers University Newark and the Director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research. His research and teaching interests include urban education and school reform, social inequality, social change and modern African American history, particularly the Black Freedom Struggle. He has written a number of books within these fields, including So Much Reform, So Little Change, (Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2008) and Teach Freedom: The African American Tradition of Education For Liberation (Teachers College Press, 2008).