Monograph of Taylor Branch Lecture on Nonviolent Leadership Now Available

Taylor Branch, the featured speaker for Jepson’s second annual Burns Lectureship in Leadership Studies and Biography, lauded the nonviolent leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists during his November 14, 2005, lecture at the Alumni Center. Citing numerous accounts of successful nonviolent leadership during the civil rights era, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author challenged the audience to consider why the philosophy of nonviolence has fallen into disfavor in America today and what can be done to change that. 

The nonviolent civil rights movement had repercussions far beyond the African-American community, Branch said. He credited its success with reviving the politics and culture of the South, helping to launch the women’s rights movement and advancing the rights of immigrants.  

Branch’s lecture couldn’t have been more timely. “At Canaan’s Edge,” the third and final volume in his comprehensive trilogy “America in the King Years,” appeared in bookstores on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 16, 2006, to great public and critical acclaim. Branch won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for the first volume in the trilogy, “Parting the Waters.” 

The Jepson School published a monograph of Branch’s lecture titled “Nonviolent Leadership: The Essence of Democracy.” To obtain a free copy of this monograph or the monograph of the first Burns lecture given by biographer Robert Dallek titled “Lessons from the Lives and Times of Presidents,” please email your request and your mailing address to Debbie Collins at dcollins@richmond.edu.