4. "Strong People Don't Need Strong Leaders"

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we explore the career of one of the most crucial civil rights leaders - Ella Baker. In particular, we will focus on: (i) her work in Harlem in the 1930s; (ii) her work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); (iii) her work for Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); (iv) her setting up of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the role that this organisation would play in the 1960s; (v) her philosophy about the role of leadership in the movement.

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).