Dr. Bell Presents: The Fight for Freedom and Equality | Zoom + Recorded

Course Description:

The struggles for freedom and equality among African Americans are well chronicled. Historian Richard Bell takes a less-traveled approach to understanding their fight. In our first session, he'll examine the mysterious origins of the name "Underground Railroad," which was neither underground nor a railroad, and how it helped push the cause of Black freedom to the center of national debate. In our second meeting, he'll begin with the story of Elizabeth Jennings, an African American schoolteacher who launched the first successful civil disobedience campaign in U.S. history after being thrown off a "whites-only" streetcar in New York. He'll then explore why streetcars were the locus of frequent and fraught attempts to police the color line in the Jim Crow North.