Ella Baker was a tireless fighter for the social equality of Black Americans. See the Duke University Libraries Digital Repository for another version of this speech. And so we must come to grips with a lot of problems. 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. Introduction. If she could have changed anything about the movement, it might have been to persuade the men leading it that they, too, should do more work behind the scenes. (Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound, 163) 3 This lesson introduces students to the life and times of civil rights activist Ella Baker (1903-1986). Show a clip from the film Fundi (11:31 min. 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. ), also located at the top of this lesson plan. I’ve heard a lot of singing in my day. 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. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., "The Spirit of Ella Baker Lives On," Washington Afro-American, January 27, 1987. Ransby, 228. Joining the NAACP in 1940, the Virginia native assisted in developing some of the brightest minds in the Civil Rights Movement. ELLA BAKER, “ADDRESS AT THE HATTIESBURG FREEDOM DAY RALLY” (21 JANUARY 1964) [1] This is rather unusual. You can join her legacy and be a part of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights today. Joe Biden Accepts Presidential Nomination: Full Transcript - The … Social & Economic Justice At the end of the weekend, the conference goers created a new group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Ella Baker quotes featured below show her opinions on activism, the fight for civil rights, and prominent civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. What have you learned about the civil rights […] Civil Rights SCEF was an interracial civil rights group. This speech was recorded at New York's Roosevelt Hotel at a dinner honoring Ella Baker. An early civil rights activist, Ella Baker is an inspiration whose work helped put the 1960s civil rights movement in motion. And you know what? Ella Baker played a key role in Civil Rights organizations including the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.This song celebrates her life and reminds us that working for justice has always been a … 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.”. This speech was recorded at New York's Roosevelt Hotel at a dinner honoring Ella Baker. Ella Baker was born on December 18, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, USA.Her parents were Georgiana and Blake Baker. She was an excellent student. 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. 2. William Jennings Bryan "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. "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. I’ve been a part of a lot of singing, but I know, and you must know, that singing alone will not do it for us. Payne, 93. 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 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. Zinn continued: "She was always doing the nitty-gritty, down-in-the-earth work that other people were not doing. Unfortunately, there is no Selma for Ella Josephine Baker. George H.W. We will choose hope over fear, … The Student Leadership Conference made it crystal clear that current sit-ins and other demonstrations Patricia Bizzell Bush Ella Baker (1903—1986) played an instrumental role in the development of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. She was also involved in the federal Workers Education Project, the Harlem YWCA, the Women's Day Workers and Industrial Leagues, and other left-wing and pro-union organizations. 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. Tim Barney She was speaking at the state convention of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as it prepared for the national Democratic Convention. She managed the household, was active in church and women's groups, and groomed her children to be pious and respectable citizens. "4 Over time, Baker began to chafe at the NAACP's bureaucracy and its egocentric national leader, Walter White. 1. 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 … Reddick, “Notes on Southern Christian Leadership Conference Administrative Committee Meeting,” April 1959, in Papers 5:171-179.. Young, An Easy Burden, … ~ Ella Baker, excerpt from Valedictorian speech, 1927, (Source: Ransby, Barbara. 9. Ella Baker Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in North Carolina.… 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] . I learned from my grandmother's stories about her life as a slave, And that is when it began, my want for social justice. She emphasized the importance of a grassroots approach over charismatic leadership within the movement. [4] We are not in the final stages of the freedom struggle. Baker's method, with the SNCC cadre and local southern communities, was to create "conditions of possibility for others to find their voices and develop leadership. For Baker change came from the bottom up. Historian Howard Zinn introduced Ella Baker as "one of the most consequential and yet one of the least honored people in America." Consider the context in which Baker gave her address and who was present in the audience. "7 Baker died on her 83rd birthday in her Harlem apartment. [10] And so all of us stand guilty at this moment for having waited so long to lend ourselves to a fight for the freedom, not of Negroes, not of the Negroes of Mississippi, but for the freedom of the American spirit, for the freedom of the human spirit for freedom, and this is the reason I am here tonight, and this is the reason, I think, that these young men who have worked and given their bodies in the movement for freedom. Religion & Morality in Public Life Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in North Carolina.… Ella Baker in an interview with Gerda Lerner, a historian, described her role in the NAACP; “you would deal with whatever the local problem was and on the basis of the needs of the people you would try to organise them in the NAACP” (Lerner, 1972, p.347). Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, A Radical Democratic Vision 1941-1960 It was headed by two of her closest friends, Anne and Carl Braden, who were white. Ella Baker – organizer, activist, radical – a commanding five feet, two inches tall – spoke those words in August of 1964. "It was the opportunity to dig in and work shoulder to shoulder with local activists that most appealed to Baker," Ransby writes. SCEF was an interracial civil rights group. Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). One activist praised Baker as "the mortar between the bricks," holding together the often unsettled foundations of the American civil rights struggle.1. 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 drive to serve her people powered Ella Baker's life. King to John Lee Tilley, 3 April 1959, in Papers 5:179.. Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 2003. Baker, Interview by John Britton, 19 June 1968, RBOH-DHU-MS. Grant, Ella Baker, 1998. 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. A nice gathering like today is not enough. It's time for us, for We the People, to come together. "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. Read Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's speech to the 2020 Democratic National Convention, as prepared for delivery: The Bradens were journalists and radical activists from Louisville, Kentucky who challenged racial oppression in their hometown and across the South. ~ Ella Baker, 1944 (Source: Ransby, Barbara. 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. In 1935, Baker went undercover to report on the dismal conditions of itinerant black domestic workers in New York. [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. Jason Edward Black After graduating in 1927, Baker moved to Harlem to live with a cousin and look for work. Denise M. Bostdorff Site by, Shawn Parry-Giles, University of Maryland. The tribute dinner took place three weeks after King's assassination in Memphis. 1981-2000 William Apess The commission had been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to study the causes of rioting in African American urban neighborhoods in 1967. That is, they didn’t do anything about it. The event was sponsored by the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF). Baker co-authored an expose titled "The Bronx Slave Market" which appeared in the NAACP's magazine, Crisis. in sociology from Shaw. Ella Baker, official of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, speaks at the Jeannette Rankin news conference on Jan. 3, 1968. And if we don’t have liberty it is because somebody else has stood between us and that which God has granted us. 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. We are really just beginning. Department of Communication 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. "Local people would be there long after she had gone. “Fundi” is a Swahili word, and Baker’s nickname, meaning someone who passes on her wisdom on to other generations.