What Ella Baker Taught Me
“In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed.”
Today is Ella Baker’s birthday, and the day she died. She came into this world on December 13, 1903, and saw fit to leave this world on December 13, 1986.
Ella Baker is a giant of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power movement, and in the field of community organizing. Despite being considered the Mother of both the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, she rarely gets the credit she deserves. I want to shine a light on a woman who has taught me about power, community organizing, campaigns, organizations, and movement building.
In March of last year, I read her biography by J. Todd Moye. In need of spiritual guidance and direct communication from the Universe about where my own career was heading, I read her biography after being encouraged to do so.
Born in Norfolk, Virginia at the turn of the century, Ella began her activism career (which she later honed into organizing) in Harlem, NY. In Harlem, her seeds in building collective power amongst everyday people were planted. One of the her first published articles was The Bronx Slave Market, a piece she authored with Marvel Cooke, celebrated journalist and labor organizer. Published in 1935, Baker went undercover as a domestic worker to highlight the economic exploitation Black women in those positions faced in New York City during the Depression.
Baker worked for a series of organizations in the City, including the Young Negroes Cooperative League, the Works Progress Administration, and even at the Harlem Library. All of this culminated in Baker working for the NAACP in various capacities over a span of two decades. She began what she called “spadework” while with the NAACP, which is her organizing style that relied heavily on building relationships with average, everyday people and building them up to tackle issues they cared about. Her work drove her to the South, and she built an extensive network of Blacks across the region that served her in the years to come. During this time, she had hundreds of one on ones, led hundreds of community meetings, and outreached in the most brutal conditions that would make anyone in our generation cry from exhaustion and the reality of racism in the 1940’s.
In the late 1950’s, she was approached by Martin Luther King Jr. to direct the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) – only without the title of Executive Director. Because of her gender, King and the other male leaders of SCLC refused to give her that title despite her work. Nevertheless, she relied on her networks that she built while working with the NAACP and began to lay the foundation for SCLC. She often bumped heads with the leaders of the organization, and after 3 years, she departed feeling jilted and frustrated. Though frustrated, her networks at SCLC led her to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) alongside a group of radical students across the South. Working in an advisory role to the student-led organization, she worked with and mentored Kwame Toure (fka Stokley Carmichael), Berniece Johnson Reagon, Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer, and a host of others. Members of SNCC later went on to found the Black Power movement, as well as take leadership roles in the Black Panther Party using Baker’s teachings as a foundation.
What made her approach different than the approach of others during her time was her focus on developing average, everyday people into strong leaders, and her instance on working on issues locally that then filter outwards through national channels. While others during the 1950’s would prefer the most eloquent speakers with letters after their names, Baker pushed for more people on the ground to be highlighted in the press, at conferences, and on stage. While others during the 1960’s would have rather her organizing focus on what the national organizations deemed important, Baker demanded that national groups listen to their local chapters (and that local chapters should drive what changes they wanted to see in their communities). Because of her style of organizing, so many campaigns, movements, and organizations have been born.
Baker’s impact has been felt for generations to come, and while it’s been nearly 4 decades since her passing, her work is just as important now as it ever was.
While beautiful and eloquent her life and career are on paper, this doesn’t erase how difficult things were for her. Baker dealt with the unique blend of racism and sexism Moya Bailey calls misogynoir. She dealt with racism from whites as she traveled across the country, she faced sexism from King and his ilk, and the unique blend of both from those around her. Baker even kept her marriage to Bob Roberts a secret from others so that she would be treated equally, something many women of the time did following in her footsteps. Baker’s marriage ended after 20 years, and she did not have any biological children of her own (though she and her husband did adopt her niece, Jackie, in the 1940’s). Baker’s last full-time employment was working for King at SCLC, and she spent the rest of her life without a salaried position, stringing together contracts, stipends, and getting support through her friends and community in what we know today as mutual aid.
These facts fill me with anger and sadness that she had to go through it. It fills me with even more anger and sadness to know that this is still happening to many women involved in movement spaces or in community organizing.
Baker did not keep a journal, so much of what is known of her life was pieced together through letters, interviews with friends, and interviews she did while she was alive (thank you Barbara Ransby for her work preserving Baker’s legacy). There is so much of her story that we will never know, and perhaps she wanted it to be that way. She’s left us with so much in a world that took so much from her.
Even though I was born just 5 years after her death, Ella Baker has taught me so much.
"In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. That means that we are going to have to learn and think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its original meaning -- getting down to and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system. That is easier said than done. But one of the things that has to be faced is in the process of wanting to change that system, how much have we got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going." -- Ella Baker, Spelman College, 1969
Her approach guides me in my organizing, in my approach to building campaigns and movements. Whenever I get overwhelmed with what my next steps need to be, I ask myself, “Who’s not at the table? Have I forgotten anyone? Are there more people I can connect with? How are my actions going to be useful in the next iteration of this campaign, or in the next iteration of myself?”
Ella Baker is a cultural ancestor of mine. None one related to me by blood, but related through our shared struggle of fighting oppression.
In the late 1930’s, my great grandmother, Revie Estell, was a member of the seamstress union in Harlem. At the same time, Ella was working throughout Harlem on social welfare campaigns. In my mind, I have a fantasy of these two powerhouse women who mean the world to me connecting. There is no proof to confirm my fantasy, but at least this thought lives in my dreams.
I often return to Ella when faced with campaign struggles, intra-community fighting, or mass movements. As we demand a ceasefire in Palestine and fight for Palestinian liberation, I leave you with an essay by organizer, feminist, Jewish Voices for Peace volunteer, and former SNCC staff member Dorothy Zellner from 2014 – What Ella Baker Taught Us About Ferguson and Gaza:
“And what, in my opinion, is the ‘root cause’ of all the death and destruction in the Middle East? It isn’t Hamas, it isn’t who sent the rockets first, who killed which teenager first, and it isn’t who broke which ceasefire first. The underlying cause flows from the injustice of one group controlling the lives and future of another group. As long as Israel occupies Palestine, and as long as Palestinians resist (which, according to International human rights law, they have the right to do), confrontations and death will result. The root cause is the occupation, which itself flows from the previous dispossession of Palestinians from the land they inhabited for generations.”
Last year in a now-deleted twitter post, I described community organizing like a mycelial network. Most of the work we do in organizing is unnoticed by the naked eye, but behind every leader, campaign, or action, there’s an entire underground network supporting what you see on the outside.
Ella Baker taught me this.
The lessons we learn from each other, the lessons we communicate to each other across generations, are all a part of a larger infrastructure. Together, we have and will continue to grow.
Even in the toughest conditions, like the mushroom above, we will continue to grow.
From Norfolk, Virgina to Gaza, Palestine, we will be free.
We will because Ella Baker, and all those who came before her, taught us.
You can read more on Ella Baker below:
Ella Baker Speaks, with an introduction by my hero, Howard Zinn
Dec 13, 1903: Civil Rights and Human Rights Activist Ella Baker born, Zinn Ed Project
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, the most comprehensive bio of Baker by Barbara Ransby
Ella Taught Me: Shattering the Myth of the Leaderless Movement, also by Barbara Ransby
Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker, documentary by filmmaker, activist, and journalist Joanne Grant (narrated by Harry Belafonte)
Solidarity with Palestine – A Radical Black Feminist Mandate: A Reading List, compiled by Black Women Radicals