Some of the groups she worked with are
YNCL Young Negroes’ Cooperative League
WEP Workers’ Education Project
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference
MFDP Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
SCEF Southern Christian Education Fund
SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
She established her place in these movements as a behind the scenes organizer and never sought leadership positions. Her philosophy about movement work involved training regular people to lead from the bottom up, as opposed to charismatic leadership from the top.
Shelara started us out by sharing that the author did her dissertation on Ella Baker when she was a student. Truly, the biography is dense and reads like an academic presentation. The text takes us from the 1930s Civil Rights Movement right up to the end of Ella Baker’s life in the 1980s. Shelara directed us to page 39:
Baker herself concluded that her parents had successfully protected her from the brunt of southern racism…The protection created a space within which Ella Baker’s self-esteem and confidence could flourish. This was a complete black community to a large extent.”
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| Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker |
I mentioned to the group that I thought it was incredible that Ella Baker was brought up in this very genteel, churchy, small town North Carolina way but she when she got to New York she dived right in. She went to Greenwich Village and people were on the corners talking about socialism and she was eager to learn about this. Coming from her background. One of the reasons I thought her family life was interesting, because Baker’s mother followed her husband to Norfolk VA, in search of more opportunities, but later decided to move her and her children back down to Littleton North Carolina.
Robin shared with us that she didn’t know who Ella Baker was, until we read this book. “As far as her marriage was concerned, I think that she had fallen in love with her husband when they were young and courting, but the movement became her primary passion. She remained in the marriage because it was convenient.”
Barb told us that “I found her evolution fascinating, from her childhood, where she was sort of being groomed to be a well-educated teacher and went to private high school and college that she had this incredible opportunity and then she took a left turn, where her family expected her to grow straight. She supported herself without making a career out of the jobs that she had. Her life’s work was her passion, but it wasn’t what she did for pay. She was just radical and unconventional in so many senses of the word. They used the term in describing her as a griot, a sage, a leader of young people, even when she wasn’t much older that those young people herself. I found her inspiring. I was amazed with the meticulousness of this biography.
Kay added, “this book was so long and with so many details. The theme for me was “Shero” and a prototype for the energizer bunny, and her cooperative spirit. When I read about her grandfather, a Baptist preacher, insisting that the congregation quietly worship as opposed to loud worship, that was very strange to me. He didn’t want anything associated with slavery. He wouldn’t even eat cornbread because it was associated with slavery. Baker stressed the importance of grass roots organizing. She made lasting friends. The friendships were like family, she had a way of connecting with people. She was able to remain neutral towards everyone because she kind of just ignored rumors of wrongdoing. She herself was critical of the ministers’ alleged sexual misconduct but would never openly discuss it.”
Kay also brought in a copy of St. Mark’s Church’s Centennial Anniversary Commemorative Book. St Mark’s was the church where Baker’s adopted daughter, Jackie, was married.
Bonnie said, “I wonder when I read this book what Baker would have thought about Bruce Jackson.” (We had read Never Far from Home, by Bruce Jackson for our last book discussion.) Bonnie continued, calling our attention to p. 195
“She held fast to her conviction that the most oppressed sectors of society had to be in the forefront of the struggle to change society.”
Bonnie further commented on Baker’s advocacy for education. She led us to page 151
“In the 1930s, she had focused her energies on adult education. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as the parent of a school aged child, she turned her attention to elementary and secondary education. Jackie was enrolled in a private Quaker school…but Baker knew that private solutions to public problems were not solutions at all.”
Bonnie went on to talk about Howard Zinn, showing us her copy of Zinn’s A Peoples History of the United States, which was published in 1980. Apparently, Zinn had written about Black women standing outside in the morning to be hired by wealthy white women who needed a housekeeper for the day. Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke wrote about this in 1935 in an article for The Crisis. The other thing, Bonnie continued, was that Ella Baker wasn’t a separatist.
Shelara interjected here, saying, “But her childhood was literally separatist.” She was referring to how she was brought up separately from the white social structure.
p. 39: “The young Ella Baker benefited from a social climate in which the adults in her immediate circle, in spite of the racism in the larger society, were able to function on a daily basis with a certain margin of confident self-determination...This protection created a space within which Ella Baker’s self-esteem and confidence could flourish. Her parents had fashioned a life for their children that allowed them to avoid routine contacts with whites.”
Robin commented here, saying, “I feel like she understood why other people felt like they needed to separate, so she would stay in the back in these discussions, when leaders in SNCC moved towards Black Nationalist Separatism. She didn’t agree but she understood and supported their theories.”
Bonnie responded further, calling our attention to the issues of class consciousness within the Black community during Baker’s childhood:
p. 44: “As she matured personally and politically, Ella Jo Baker departed from her family’s characteristic posture (toward) the poor and downtrodden. She eventually adopted the notion that the more privileged, educated, and articulate members of the African American community were not only duty-bound to come to the aid of their less fortunate brothers and sisters, but also had to humble themselves in order to create the social space necessary for the more oppressed people in the community to speak and act on their own behalf.”
Laura shared with us that she “knew about SNCC and other organizations but didn’t know about the tensions between them. I also I think that her upbringing in the black community, and that sense of community and being a part of something really did give her that foundation for a firm conviction that things in the country could be different. I also loved that she always wanted the people themselves to work for their own rights.
The text of the book ends on page 374, followed by nearly 100 more pages of Notes and the Index. Notes from our discussion took up six notebook pages (and could have been a lot more, if we had the chance to talk about everything in the book.)
These few lyrics from Ella’s Song, written by Bernice Johnson Reagon and recorded by Reagon’s group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, describes Ella Baker's vision more eloquently than notes from a book discussion ever could:
Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me
I need to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny
Struggling myself don’t mean a whole lot, I’ve come to realize
That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survives
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