"2 Baker's father was railroad dining-car waiter. 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. The commission had been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to study the causes of rioting in African American urban neighborhoods in 1967. 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. Baker had worked with the organization from the late 1950s. Kalen M. A. Churcher, Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project Ella Baker: Bigger Than a Hamburger Baker wrote this summary of the speech she gave at the Southwide Student Leadership Conference on Nonviolent Resistance to Segregation, Shaw University, April 1960. 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. As a young adult, Ella Baker attended Shaw University. [During the Poor Peoples Campaign"Solidarity Day" mass rally.] While all sorts of rhetoric was going on, all kinds of grandstanding was going on, that's what she was doing."9. And so we must come to grips with a lot of problems. Miss Baker is presently staff member and consultant with SCEF (Southern Conference Education Fund). Ella Baker was a master strategist and visionary in the civil rights movement. Baker co-authored an expose titled "The Bronx Slave Market" which appeared in the NAACP's magazine, Crisis. Diane M. Blair 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.” ', 'Give light and people will find the way', and 'You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me. It's time for us, for We the People, to come together. There’s no tasteful homage to her powers of speech, nary a commemorative magazine issue nor … Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in rural Littleton, North Carolina. 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 … Albert Beveridge Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., "The Spirit of Ella Baker Lives On," Washington Afro-American, January 27, 1987. At the end of the discussion, explain that they will be studying the author of the quotation, Ella Baker. [8] I love to hear us sing. 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. Payne, 93. 7 quotes from Ella Baker: '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. 2. We are going to have to be concerned about the kinds of education our children are getting in school, and all of this has to be done along at the same time that we also recognize that our white brothers, the very white brothers in Hattiesburg and in other parts of Mississippi who have kept us in bondage, that they did it because they did not know any better. "Such people get so involved with playing the game of being important that they exhaust themselves and their time and they don't do the work of actually organizing. Ella Baker with William Kunstler and Marilyn Clement, 1980 206 Ella Baker in her Harlem apartment, 1984 207 Ella Baker, Jackie Brockington, and Carolyn Brockington, 1985 208. acknowledgments This book has taken me on a long and circuitous path, which began in 1989 when I chose to research the life of Ella Baker as a dissertation topic. This speech was recorded at New York's Roosevelt Hotel at a dinner honoring Ella Baker. We will choose hope over fear, … Learn more about Baker… 1961-1980 Reddick, “Notes on Southern Christian Leadership Conference Administrative Committee Meeting,” April 1959, in Papers 5:171-179.. Young, An Easy Burden, 1996. [9] They have been fooled, and they have been fooled by those who told them the “big lie.” The “big lie” was to the effect that they could do what they wanted in Mississippi with the Negro question. I went to school like everyone else, But I did not follow all of the rules. Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998). Ella Baker was a tireless fighter for the social equality of Black Americans. 4. Baker, Interview by John Britton, 19 June 1968, RBOH-DHU-MS. Grant, Ella Baker, 1998. Ella Baker, American community organizer and political activist who brought her skills and principles to bear in the major civil rights organizations of the mid-20th century. ELLA BAKER, “ADDRESS AT THE HATTIESBURG FREEDOM DAY RALLY” (21 JANUARY 1964) Classroom Activities. It was headed by two of her closest friends, Anne and Carl Braden, who were white. She left the national organization in 1946 to care for a young niece, but eventually took the helm of the New York City NAACP branch. SCEF was an interracial civil rights group. 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 … The right to be men and women, to grow and to develop to the fullest capacity with which He has endowed us. Carmichael was there, too, flanked by bodyguards because of the increasing controversy caused by his black power rhetoric. 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) Joe Biden opened his acceptance speech Thursday night by quoting someone whom most of the audience -- indeed, most American -- have never heard of. Ella Baker stayed involved in progressive politics and collective action well into her later years. J. Todd Moye, Ella Baker: Community Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013). Kicking Bear Because even tomorrow if every vestige of racial discrimination were wiped out, if all of us became free enough to go down and to associate with all the people we wanted to associate, we still are not free. 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. In the final analysis, [she felt] the major political decisions had to be theirs."5. William Apess 2001-present, Susan B. Anthony 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. It brought together a new generation of organizers, including Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, Diane Nash, Julian Bond, and John Lewis. Baker worked well in the NAACP, hence her reputation. Her mother had been trained as a teacher. That tomorrow if we were to call up all the able-bodied men in our country, who could do some work, we wouldn’t have work for them to do. She remained true to her self-effacing style, leaving relatively few personal records or intimate interviews for historians and biographers to work with. For King, it was "top down." War & Peace, 1700-1899 Video December 15, 2017 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment. And after the ceremony, the little ceremony in the station, one of the leading civil right leaders (I won’t name any because leadership is one of those things, you know, I won’t talk about them too much) but this person said, “We are in the final stages of the freedom struggle.” And I challenge that. Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in North Carolina.… Tomorrow, tomorrow if we were able to vote our full strength and we still voted our full strength, until we recognize that in this country in a land of great and plenty and great wealth there are millions of people who go to bed hungry every night. Ella Baker, “The Black Woman in the Civil Rights Struggle,” address given at Institute of the Black World, Atlanta, Georgia, 1969; Joanne Grant, “Appendix,” in Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (New York: John Wiley, 1998), 227–231. SCEF was an interracial civil rights group. 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. At 57 years old, Baker was "the godmother of SNCC," urging the group to move deep into the rural South to recruit and support local leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Mississippi. 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. Historian Charles M. Payne says Baker's vast travels for the NAACP were a kind of "practicum" in grassroots social change.3 Early on, Baker recognized the dangers inherent in having well-educated outsiders arrive in local communities to organize. 7. Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in rural Littleton, North Carolina. "Local people would be there long after she had gone. Ella Baker was an instrumental figure in the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the late 1950s and in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the early 1960s. This lesson introduces students to the life and times of civil rights activist Ella Baker (1903-1986). Does Baker address any of those other issues? 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