Black History Month: Ella Baker and the SCLC

To be fair–this could easily be written and posted for Women’s History Month rather than “just” with writings on Black American History because Baker’s kinda important.

I say that–but I reckon people who may come across this aren’t familiar with her. She wasn’t giving big speeches, she wasn’t a billionaire, and she wasn’t a publicity-seeking artist of any sort. No–Baker worked in the background…partially by choice, but sadly, partially because of a bias against women.

Baker was part of the Civil Rights Movement. She worked with everyone from King to DuBois providing advice–and also applying her organizational skills. Multiple sources declare her to be the most important woman in the Civil Rights movement while others think her general importance across the 20th century should be recognized. One historian says “She is one of the most important leaders of the 20th Century in America, yet her work remains unnoticed.” –Would we say that with a man?

So I went digging. There’s a reason Baker isn’t famous–she disliked leadership based around a cult of personality. She believed that when everything revolved around a specific individual, it increased the chance of corruption of ideals. It put individual ego at the forefront. When you look at certain strife within the Civil Rights movement, you can see Baker’s point. Instead, Baker espoused grass-roots activism. She believed that if people were encouraged to be active and involved, showed they had numbers, that this would cause political change–but also be able to continue regardless of arrests or bombings. After all, you can murder one leader, you can arrest a dozen, but it’s not possible to do so with thousands (“Jail, no bail” anyone?)

Just as important, when the people are active, the organization’s goals will truly reflect the will of its members. This is why Baker gravitated to the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and was one of SNCC’s most influential advisors–advisor, not leader or commander. (SNCC leaders referred to her as “Godmother of the Movement” since she was in her late 50s and they were all in their 20s)

I’m not above reading Wikipedia for info–almost always, you get a nice summary. Her wikipedia entry has a great quote on her outlook:

“You didn’t see me on television, you didn’t see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

I think–my opinion and nothing more–that’s a pretty strong criticism of King, Malcolm X, and others such as Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson (Baker apparently went on record with this: “The Civil Rights Movement made Reverend King. King did not make the Movement.”). What’s curious is that this is also criticism of organized religion–especially Southern Baptism which emphasized male leadership in the church. –thinking about it…there are no women leaders within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or regional/local civil rights organizations affiliated with organized religion. Women as leaders in the Civil Rights movement–they all came from the grassroots community-based organizations.

I don’t think I ever thought much about that until sitting down to write this. So that not only is Baker working for civil rights–she’s also fighting uphill to advance the cause of black women, to get them leadership opportunities and to have their voices heard.

And since one of the other things I’ve been thinking about over the past several months has been leadership and mentoring, Baker becomes even more important, helping young people of across the political spectrum become leaders from Bernice J. Reagon to Stokely Carmichael, constantly emphasizing (not always with success) the importance of people-power and the dangers of charismatic leadership.

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I’m convinced that without Baker, the Civil Rights Movement struggles–across all the major organizations (NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, NAACP-LDF, CORE), there’s unanimity about Baker’s organizational skills and her ability to build consensus. Without her, does SNCC grow to influence events across the South? No SNCC, no sit-ins to draw media attention to bring in well-known people (King for instance) capable of drawing national media attention to segregationist brutality across the South.

And yet–no one’s heard of her. She’s not mentioned in any of the high school history texts I have at all, not for the Civil Rights movement OR for women’s rights. That’s a pity and it really should be rectified. Baker’s important for what she represents, what she did…the idea that you, I, everyone is capable of creating positive change.