Strong people don’t need a strong leader

“A woman taking the dignified and self-respecting manner that was a familiar feature of black family life into the rugged political domain was nothing short of revolutionary.”
—Bob Moses, quoted in Barbara Ransby’s book, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, A Radical Democratic Vision

Ella Baker had a presence and commanded attention. She could maneuver effectively in all-male circles and all-white contexts. She entered every room as if she belonged there—which she did! In her most powerful years she appeared as an unassuming middle aged Black woman with her purse under her arm, with her hat on her head, and good southern manners. (Like many of my favorite perSISTERS she was very fond of hats.)

Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 – December 13, 1986) was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a largely behind-the-scenes, grassroots organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century. She also mentored many emerging activists as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Baker criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership; she promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the oppressed to understand their worlds and advocate for themselves. She realized this vision most fully in the 1960s as the primary advisor and strategist of the SNCC.

Biographer Barbara Ransby calls Baker “one of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement”. She is known for her critiques of both racism in American culture and sexism in the civil rights movement.
(From Wikipedia)

Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the black freedom struggle. She was a national officer and key figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), and a prime mover in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Baker made a place for herself in predominantly male political circles that included W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr., all the while maintaining relationships with a vibrant group of women, students, and activists both black and white.

Baker was a complex figure whose radical, democratic worldview, commitment to empowering the black poor, and emphasis on group-centered, grassroots leadership set her apart from most of her political contemporaries. 

(Above adapted from the description of Barbara Ransby’s book, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, A Radical Democratic Vision here: https://uncpress.org/book/9780807856161/ella-baker-and-the-black-freedom-movement/)

Ella’s most radical accomplishment was an approach that set aside the desire for bourgeois respectability, thereby vitalizing a movement for civil rights with energy sourced from previously marginalized sectors of the Black community: young people, poor people, and women. She turned the hierarchies on their heads.

Ransby describes Ella’s power during her prime years with SNCC:

“First, she encouraged a democratic practice and an egalitarian structure as an alternative to the normative presence of many undemocratic traditions in both the black and the white American institutions that the young people had been a part of, mainly schools and churches. Second, she gently nudged the students in the direction of embracing a class analysis of racism and injustice that allied them with those at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy—those who were sometimes at the margins of mainstream societies, black and white, but who were central to resistance efforts.

Third, Ella Baker affirmed in her practice and her teachings a style of personal grassroots organizing that, while more common among women than men, was a part of a radical democratic humanist tradition that both men and women could lay claim to. With the subtle power of her presence, Baker offered a different model of gender relations and a broader spectrum of gender identities. Her own transgressive female identity was represented by her uninhibited occupation of predominately male political spaces, her refusal to be a conventional teacher, and her rejection of a social identification as someone’s wife. Her way of being a black woman challenged men in SNCC to rethink manhood and masculinity, just as it gave women in the movement a widened sense of their own possibilities as doers, thinkers, and powerful social change agents.

. . .

To say this is not to portray SNCC as an egalitarian utopia; it was not. However, Ella Baker’s leadership and presence helped fashion the practice and philosophy of the group in such a way that traditional norms of male dominance, white privilege, and class elitism were overturned in much of the day-to-day functioning of the group and in the public image it projected.”

Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (Gender and American Culture) (p. 363-364). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition. 

SOURCES

I just love Barbara Ransby’s book, cited above.

Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker, a film by Joanne Grant , available for $5 on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fundi   This is really great to watch after reading Ransby’s book, because you get to see many of the luminaries mentioned. You also get to see Virginia Durr (my step-great aunt-in-law) sitting on her sofa with Ella Baker, talking about the old days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d_RulHh6_g
April 24, 1968 Ella starts talking at 5:30. 8:40: “One must do what one’s conscience bids them do. And from no one, except yourself, expect applause.”

Shattering the myth of a leaderless movement, by Ransby:
https://colorlines.com/article/ella-taught-me-shattering-myth-leaderless-movement/

Cornell West, in his inimitable style, talks about Ella and not a “leaderless, but leaderfull” movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omyQ6P2SCzo

Student project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68U57yi9F1E

People who know Ella speak: https://vimeo.com/268463422

The Female Power Project supports the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: https://ellabakercenter.org