Soon after the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott erupted, Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Stanley Levinson (a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr.) used their connections with northern liberals and unions to establish In Friendship, which raised funds and provided support for the boycott campaign. Joining the NAACP in 1940, the Virginia native assisted in developing some of the brightest minds in the Civil Rights Movement. [1] This is rather unusual. There’s no tasteful homage to her powers of speech, nary a commemorative magazine issue nor … She was speaking at the state convention of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as it prepared for the national Democratic Convention. Ella Baker & The Black Freedom Movement) This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real. 1900-1940 From left -- Emory Harris, Stokely Carmichael (in hat), Sam Block, Eleanor Holmes, and Ella Baker. Helen Caldicott Ella Baker & The Black Freedom Movement) Give people light and they will find a way. 5. Baker encouraged the young people to be their own leaders rather than get absorbed in existing organizations. We aren’t free until within us we have that deep sense of freedom from a lot of things that we don’t even mention in these meetings. 2130 Skinner Building U.S. Internationalism The women workers were routinely approached by white men wanting to pay for sex. The tribute dinner took place three weeks after King's assassination in Memphis. She believed that local African Americans could best lead themselves in their efforts to overturn Jim Crow segregation, rather than relying on charismatic preachers or outside experts. She was an excellent student. Marilyn Bordwell Delaure, "Planting Seeds of Change: Ella Baker's Radical Rhetoric," Women's Studies in Communication, 2008, 1. And you know what? But in my own experience the differences were more of emphasis than of kind, and both played necessary roles. This lesson introduces students to the life and times of civil rights activist Ella Baker (1903-1986). Tim Barney William Apess For make no mistake. Shawn Parry-Giles, University of Maryland, Copyright © Voices of Democracy. And although Baker had a reputation as a powerful orator, she "did not give many formal speeches before large audiences that were recorded by the media or published in manuscript form. A nice gathering like today is not enough. Equality for all, that was what I wanted, And that is what I would work for my whole life. It brought together a new generation of organizers, including Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, Diane Nash, Julian Bond, and John Lewis. [During the Poor Peoples Campaign"Solidarity Day" mass rally.] College Park, MD 20742-7635, Questions/comments about the VOD website may be directed to Note: Fundi is an African word honoring a person who is a skilled or expert teacher. Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it. Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in North Carolina.… Ella Josephine Baker was a civil rights activist whose organizational, behind-the-scenes work made her one of the most important figures in the Civil Rights Movement. See the Duke University Libraries Digital Repository for another version of this speech. In 1957, Rustin and Baker travelled south to help the young King create a new organization that would coordinate protest activities across the region, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). ~ Ella Baker, excerpt from Valedictorian speech, 1927, (Source: Ransby, Barbara. “Fundi” is a Swahili word, and Baker’s nickname, meaning someone who passes on her wisdom on to other generations. Speaking to the conference Ella Baker told the students that their struggle was “much bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized coke.” In presenting this bigger picture and encouraging them to form their own organization, Ella Baker displayed a talent she had been employing for more than two decades: assisting people to empower themselves. Although the Great Depression made jobs scarce, Baker thrived intellectually in the political and cultural ferment of the Harlem Renaissance. Her family valued faith, hard work, education and duty to the community. Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Reddick, “Notes on Southern Christian Leadership Conference Administrative Committee Meeting,” April 1959, in Papers 5:171-179.. Young, An Easy Burden, 1996. Baker often spent a half of each year on the road. Unfortunately, there is no Selma for Ella Josephine Baker. People cannot, pardon me, people cannot be free until there is enough work in the land to give everybody a job. Having worked with the NAACP, SCLC, SNCC and now SCE… After graduating from Shaw University, she organized consumer cooperatives in New York and worked on consumer affairs for the Works Progress … Patrick Buchanan People cannot be free until they realize that peace—we can talk about peace—that peace is not the absence of war or struggle, it is the presence of justice. ELLA BAKER, “ADDRESS AT THE HATTIESBURG FREEDOM DAY RALLY” (21 JANUARY 1964) Classroom Activities. At Baker’s side is actress Ruby Dee. Ella Baker was a tireless fighter for the social equality of Black Americans. With her years of ground-level organizing across the South, Baker had a wealth of local networks and connections to help spread the SCLC message. [7] And so in conclusion let me quote one of my favorite or improvise one of my favorite thoughts in scripture. Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left … And it has to do with the whole struggle I think because it says, “For now we are nearer than when we first believed.” I forgot the exact quote, but let us “cast aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”. [3] And as I have listened here tonight, my spirit has rove over a long period of years and I can think of a number of things I would like to say, but if I had anything at all to say tonight is to remind us of something that occurred to me, something that came into focus in a conversation on the night that Medger Evers’s body came through Atlanta. (Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound, 163) 3 For Baker change came from the bottom up. Ella Baker, an official for the Southern Conference Educational Fund, speaks at the Jeannette Rankin news conference on January 3, 1968. Ella Baker, Key Note Speech before the State Convention of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, August 6, 1964 Let Nobody Turn Us Around : An African American Anthology by Manning Marable (Editor); Leith Mullings (Editor) The Student Leadership Conference made it crystal clear that current sit-ins and other demonstrations From left -- Emory Harris, Stokely Carmichael (in hat), Sam Block, Eleanor Holmes, and Ella Baker. Baker had worked with the organization from the late 1950s. "Local people would be there long after she had gone. Read about Speech to Southern Conference Education Fund by Ella Baker and see the artwork, lyrics and similar artists. It's time for us, for We the People, to come together. Ransby, 228. Zinn continued: "She was always doing the nitty-gritty, down-in-the-earth work that other people were not doing. "Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way," Biden said. After graduating from Shaw University, Ella Baker moved to New York City and began her career as a grassroots organizer. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935), 85. Baker, Interview by John Britton, 19 June 1968, RBOH-DHU-MS. Grant, Ella Baker, 1998. Though Baker had misgivings about King's top-down leadership style, she signed on as the provisional director of the SCLC's voter rights campaign. [5] And I’m not talking about Negroes, I’m talking about people. "It was the opportunity to dig in and work shoulder to shoulder with local activists that most appealed to Baker," Ransby writes. Ella Baker never officially retired from public life. And so we have come here tonight to renew our struggle, our struggle for that which we are entitled by virtue of being children of the Almighty. 9. Kicking Bear She emphasized the importance of a grassroots approach over charismatic leadership within the movement. The event was sponsored by the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF). In 1940, Baker got a job working for the NAACP as a field organizer and later as a director of the organization's branches. Aaron Henry said that I had had my fling with all the civil rights organizations. As an obvious nod to Black women who are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic party, Biden used a quote from “a giant of the civil rights movement,” Ella Baker, to frame the core theme of his speech – “Give the people light, and they will find a way.” Throughout the speech, Biden drew “light versus dark” contrasts with Trump. She was a guiding force for prominent movement leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, and she fueled the work of several leading organizations in the freedom movement. She helped organize The Young Negroes Cooperative League, a coalition of local cooperatives and buying clubs that banded together to increase their economic power. "7 Baker died on her 83rd birthday in her Harlem apartment. I went to school like everyone else, But I did not follow all of the rules. For King, it was "top down." Ella Baker was a master strategist and visionary in the civil rights movement. [6] And unless we see this thing in its larger perspective, unless we realize that certainly we must sing, we must have the inspiration of song, the inspiration that comes from songs like this one that was created and demonstrated here tonight, but we also must have the information that comes from lots and lots of study. A group of people were down at the station among us; we were there for the purpose of identifying with the great tragedy that had occurred in his being shot to death. Jason Edward Black Ella Baker was my name and civil rights was my game. Bigger than any group of people, and it is the cause of humanity. Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in North Carolina.… “Ella Baker used her powerful voice to speak out for the world she believed in, one in which every human being is respected, regardless of race, gender, and ethnicity,” said Dana Rubin, founder of The Speaking While Female Speech Bank which celebrates women’s public speech with more than 1,800 examples of women using their voices for change. After more than two years, Baker left the SCLC because she felt it had become excessively centered on King's persona and authority. The Student Leadership Conference made it crystal clear that current sit-ins and other demonstrations Ella Baker > Quotes > Quotable Quote “Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.” This speech was recorded at New York's Roosevelt Hotel at a dinner honoring Ella Baker. 1. Well, my greatest fling has still to be flung, because as far as I’m concerned I was never working for an organization, I have always tried to work for a cause, and the cause to me is bigger than any organization. ELLA BAKER, “ADDRESS AT THE HATTIESBURG FREEDOM DAY RALLY” (21 JANUARY 1964) [1] This is rather unusual. Ella Baker was a behind-the-scene strategist in many of the American progressive movements of the 20th century. The Bradens were journalists and radical activists from Louisville, Kentucky who challenged racial oppression in their hometown and across the South. “I found a greater sense of importance by being a part of those who were growing,” Baker told filmmaker Joanne Grant in her 1981 documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. By Ella Baker The Southern Patriot May, 1960 [After SNCC's founding conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, Ella Baker wrote the following article that summarized the address she gave at the conference.See SNCC Founded for background] . Social & Economic Justice Ella Baker once said, “This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real.” This dream of Baker’s can continue to be made real. Brown attended the dinner, having been recently released from a Louisiana prison on a weapons charge. The family was hardly well-to-do, but they had much compared to the desperate poverty endured by so many other African Americans, and they believed much was expected of them in return. She posed as a job seeker among the black women who waited each morning on designated Bronx street corners for white women to hire them for a day of low-paid labor. While all sorts of rhetoric was going on, all kinds of grandstanding was going on, that's what she was doing."9. And we are going to have to have these freedom schools and we are going to have to learn a lot of things in them. Baker co-authored an expose titled "The Bronx Slave Market" which appeared in the NAACP's magazine, Crisis. She showed an early interest in activism, leading campus protests against strict social rules such as a ban on silk stockings and the obligation to sing spirituals to visiting guests. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 373. George W. Bush "4 Over time, Baker began to chafe at the NAACP's bureaucracy and its egocentric national leader, Walter White. As the 1950s civil rights movement gathered steam in the South, Baker joined with New York activists Stanley Levison and Bayard Rustin to raise money in support of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Montgomery Improvement Association in Alabama, and the group's city bus boycott. George H.W. Whether Baker was supporting local branches of the NAACP, working behind the scenes to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Martin Luther King Jr., or mentoring college students through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she was … Ibid. ~ Ella Baker, 1944 (Source: Ransby, Barbara. In 1960, a wave of student-led lunch counter sit-ins offered new promise. This transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview conducted by John H. Britton, staff associate, Civil Rights Documentation Project, with Miss Ella Baker in Washington, D.C., June 19, 1968. Consider the context in which Baker gave her address and who was present in the audience. She was born in 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, and was raised in North Carolina where she would go on to attend Shaw University in Raleigh. The commission had been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to study the causes of rioting in African American urban neighborhoods in 1967. Ibid, 15. SCEF was an interracial civil rights group. She has devoted most of her life to the cause of civil rights. (Jack Harris / AP Photo) An early civil rights activist, Ella Baker is an inspiration whose work helped put the 1960s civil rights movement in motion. Ella Baker – organizer, activist, radical – a commanding five feet, two inches tall – spoke those words in August of 1964. ... besides voting rights, were discussed by civil rights activists at the time of Baker’s speech.