Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement

“Baker recalled: ‘My man-woman relationships were on the basis of just being a human being, not a sex object. As far as my sense of security, it had been established. [...] I had been able to compete on levels such as scholarship. [...] And I could stand my own in debate. And things of that nature. I wasn’t delicate.’” 

Baker’s own recollection of her relationships with men is that she would take nothing less than respect as a human being. This quote is important for understanding how Baker saw herself. She could always run with the smart and highly educated because she matched them in understanding and scholarship, which forced them to take her seriously as a woman and a human.

“They became key gathering places for many young Harlem artists, intellectuals, and activists. On his arrival in New York in 1921, the poet Langston Hughes recounted: ‘I came up out of the subway at 135th and Lenox into the beginnings of the Negro Renaissance. I headed for the Harlem YMCA down the block, where so many new, young dark [...] arrivals in Harlem have spent their early days. The next place I headed to that afternoon was the Harlem Branch Library just up the street.’ These two institutions were the dual pillars of Harlem’s intellectual and political life for over two decades.” 

Harlem’s public institutions became centers of intellectual discourse during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and ’30s. The YMCA/YWCA and the 135th St. Library were central to ongoing discussions about everything from socialism to civil rights struggles.

“In many respects, Baker herself was what Gramscian theorists refer to as an ‘organic intellectual.’ Her primary base of knowledge came from grassroots communities and from lived experience, not from formal study. She was a partisan intellectual, never feigning a bloodless objectivity, but always insisting that ideas should be employed in the service of oppressed people and toward the goal of social justice. In the 1930s, New York was her classroom, and Baker was both student and teacher.” 

Baker did not have formal schooling beyond her time at Shaw Academy and University; she learned through conversations, through reading, through her lived experience. As a result, she believed that education and knowledge were not impartial objects one could simply learn but something that was deeply partisan and required curiosity and questioning.

“The Simpson Avenue block exudes the stench of the slave market at its worst. Not only is human labor bartered and sold for slave wage, but human love also is a marketable commodity. [...] Rain or shine, cold or hot, you will find them there—Negro women, old and young, sometimes bedraggled, sometimes neatly dressed—but with the invariable paper bundle, waiting expectantly for Bronx housewives to buy their strength and energy for an hour, two hours, or even for a day. [...] If not the wives themselves, maybe their husbands, their sons, their brothers, under the subterfuge of work, offer worldly-wise girls higher bids for their time.” 

In this excerpt from her article “The Bronx Slave Market,” Baker compares 1930s Harlem to the slave markets 100 years prior, deliberately evoking images of bodies being bartered and sold as objects to engage the reader’s compassion and empathy for the economic struggles of black people in the Depression era.

“The economic rigors of the depression had intensified all forms of oppression, pushing many black women from the lower rungs of the wage labor force back to day work and even into occasional prostitution. When Baker and Cooke wrote their article, the modern concept of feminism was still a foreign notion to most Americans, black and white. Yet the black feminist notion of intersecting systems of oppression as a cornerstone of black women’s collective experience was an observable reality, and in their article Cooke and Baker came close to articulating it as a theory.” 

The Great Depression did not impact everyone equally. The impact in Harlem was evident everywhere. Here, Ransby points out that Baker and her co-author, Cooke, were close to articulating the gender theory of intersectionality, a term coined by theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw nearly 50 years later to describe how oppressive elements impact people differently based on their intersecting identities (being black and being a woman, for example).

“Baker was well informed about left political theory and questioned all the viewpoints. She read and debated Marxist ideas regularly with her coworkers in the WEP, but she was never known to toe a ‘party line’ of any type. Indeed, she was a vigorous opponent of sectarianism, regarding organizational splits over abstractions as destructive to organizing for change. Baker’s interest in Marxism was an extension of her open-minded exploration of a wide spectrum of political views.” 

As an “organic intellectual,” Baker was committed to learning every theory she could and refused to buy wholeheartedly into any one political theory. Rather, she strove for an openminded approach to politics and theory.

“She had been told since she was a young child that she was inferior to no one, and she believed it. But her confidence routinely rubbed against the reality of Jim Crow segregation. Baker’s struggle against racism was as much about standing up for herself as it was about lending her strength to struggles initiated on behalf of others.” 

Much of Baker’s commanding presence stemmed from her mother raising her with the belief that she was not inferior, that she had good to offer the world. Maintaining that presence became harder when racist whites treated her as an object, but such incidents instilled in her the strength to fight back.

“Baker was not naive about sexism, but her approach was to simply plow ahead as if she expected no one to stop her—and, more often than not, no one did. But she did not try to ignore sexism in the hope that it would just go away. She pushed for broader inclusion and fairer treatment of other women and took opportunities to make women feel valued within the organization, including women whose main roles in life were those of wife and mother.” 

Baker, like many women of her time, faced a lot of sexism from men in the Black Freedom Movement. She knew it and saw it but refused to let it cow her into silence. She worked hard to create an inclusive atmosphere in her organizing, which empowered other women.

“New York City didn’t act right after the ’54 decision. It didn’t have any reason to act, so you had to help it to realize it. I was asked to serve on the Mayor’s Commission. They finally discovered the city wasn’t integrated! And Bob Wagner the second was then Mayor, and we ended up by having several sessions with him. In ’57, the entire summer was spent in weekly parent workshops, helping parents become aware that they had certain rights.” 

In the 1950s Baker became involved in projects to integrate New York City’s school system following the Brown decision. Here she writes how she and her fellow protestors pushed the city to recognize that integration had to be executed deliberately and would not just happen because the law changed.

“Liberal-left coalition work took on new meanings during the postwar period, when virulent anticommunism spread through the organized labor movement, partisan politics, the U.S. government, and even the civil rights movement. At the same time, the move away from inclusive popular front politics and toward a more rigid sectarian agenda on the part of the Communist Party only exacerbated the situation. Comfortable alliances among people on the left who had divergent ideologies and affiliations dissolved under the dual pressures. Some independent socialists stood by current and former Communist Party members who had organized alongside them, while others sought to distance themselves from this increasingly suspect and stigmatized group by denouncing their former co-workers and, in some cases, ‘naming names’ to government investigators to absolve themselves.” 

Ransby gives readers context for the anti-communist sentiment post-World War II. Where leftist coalitions previously worked happily alongside communists, many now distanced themselves from communist alliances to be perceived as pro-American.

“She had learned from her work with the NAACP, both in the South and in Harlem, that any viable social change organization had to be built from the bottom up. ‘Authentic’ leadership could not come from the outside or above; rather, the people who were most oppressed had to take direct action to change their circumstances.” 

This passage describes Baker’s philosophy of organization. Outsider celebrities couldn’t just show up for a day and move a group to act. Organization for a movement required tons of legwork and authentic connection with the local population—people had to be empowered to act on their own behalf.

“The strength of SCLC rested on the political activities of its local church affiliates. By giving church activists a sense of connection to one another and by infusing an explicitly political message into the black theology of the 1950s, SCLC envisioned itself as the ‘political arm of the black church,’ according to the sociologist Aldon Morris.” 

The importance of SCLC was its positioning within the black church in America, making its theology political in a time when white churches were also becoming increasingly political. SCLC organized desire for political action into a movement that local preachers could connect to.

“But Baker and King had made very divergent choices about how to utilize their skills and privileges. They translated religious faith into their political identities in profoundly different ways. Above all, they defined the confluence of their roles as individuals and their roles as participants in a mass movement for social change quite distinctly. Baker was a militant egalitarian, and King was a sophisticated southern Baptist preacher.” 

Baker and Martin Luther King Jr. were both motivated in part by faith to join the civil rights moment, but they saw their roles differently. Where Baker saw herself as one of the people, King saw himself as a leader, a shepherd of a flock.

“Her critique of the limitations of nonviolence was informed by her connections with the militant struggles of the 1930s and the self-defense ethos of those she worked with in the 1940s, and it foreshadowed her support of revolutionary militancy in the late 1960s. Baker consistently gave voice to a radical vision for social transformation and encouraged others to join her in the struggle necessary to realize that vision. The realist in her understood that such a struggle might, at times, become heated and even physical. Engaging in determined conflict entailed utilizing a variety of tactics. Baker felt that oppressed people needed to tap whatever resources they had at their disposal to forge a viable strategy for resistance, especially in the dangerous and violent climate of the Jim Crow South.” 

Baker struggled with the black freedom movement’s commitment to nonviolence as she met people across the South who required weapons and self-defense against violent whites who objected to their presence. Baker felt it unhelpful to take potential self-defense and violent action against oppressors off the table.

“Ella Baker understood that the struggles in Louisiana and Alabama represented only the tip of the iceberg of southern racism and injustice and gave only a hint of black people’s willingness to resist oppression. She was committed to the struggle for the long haul, having devoted thirty years to progressive causes. In 1959, she had not yet found the right political organization to serve as her base of operations, but she was finding like-minded allies in the mass movements that were emerging in the South.” 

Baker knew there was more to be done than the protests she was seeing, and she sought a home for her skills and style of organization. Working in Louisiana and Alabama brought her into contact with activists of a similar mind, and there Baker saw firsthand how much black people had to fight.

“For Baker, radical youth did have a unique, although not isolated, role to play in the movement for social change. The energy and passion they brought to bear was a vital resource. Students were less inhibited than adults by concerns about jobs, children, and reputations. Still, Baker was living proof that one did not have to be young to be radical.” 

When Baker became involved in SNCC, she was buoyed by the students’ passion and radicalism. Students could do more than many adults, who had to hold down jobs and provide for families. But Baker (by that time middle age) was proof that radical protest knows no age.

“Baker kept her boundaries between what was public and private, formal and informal. But she was not rigid about it. Dorothy Dawson (Burlage), a SNCC volunteer and staff member, once ‘slipped’ and called her ‘Ella’ (instead of Miss Baker), a mistake Dawson immediately regretted, feeling she had transgressed a boundary. Baker reassured her, ‘People know when they are ready to call me Ella. Don’t worry about it.’” 

Baker always had firm boundaries between her public and private life—many students in SNCC did not even know she was married for a time. But in this anecdote, we see that Baker was warm and cordial about it, allowing people to know when they had been invited into her inner circle.

“Baker insisted that a movement was a web of social relationships. Charismatic leaders could rally an anonymous mass of followers to turn out for a single event or series of events; millions could watch television coverage of heroic actions by a brave few or speeches by mesmerizing orators; but that was mobilization, not organization. In order to be effective organizers in a particular community, Baker argued, activists had to form relationships, build trust, and engage in a democratic process of decision making together with community members. The goal was to politicize the community and empower ordinary people. This was Baker’s model, and in 1961 it became SNCC’s model.” 

Ransby reiterates that the composition of a social movement, for Baker, was not about motivation and charismatic leadership but about ordinary people building trust with each other, feeling empowered to act in their own communities.

“The real test of a democratic leadership was whether groups and individuals could downplay their partisan and personal interests for the greater good. Proprietary claims to or by an organization, or to any position within it, were corrupting, Baker believed, arguing instead for placing the ideals and politics of the movement above the interests of any one organization, including SNCC itself. This approach stood in contrast to that of the NAACP, which sought to exert tighter control over its branches despite, and sometimes because of, aggressive local leadership and resistance to centralized authority.” 

Baker believed that movements that wanted credit for certain actions and ideas had misplaced priorities. What mattered was that the protest happened, not who organized it or took responsibility for it. The important thing was the movement, not any one organization’s prominence.

“In Baker’s view, if people did not feel they had taken an active part in their own emancipation, but believed that it had been won for them, then half the battle had already been lost; ordinary people’s sense of their own power would be compromised.” 

Baker’s political philosophy is crystallized here: Ordinary people must participate in their own liberation through direct action, or else they will not feel like they earned their place or had a hand in their own emancipation.

“She was a striking exception to the predominant images that defined black womanhood; her style and demeanor encompassed socially ascribed masculine and feminine qualities—nurturing warmth coupled with a ruggedly unshakable confidence. That made her an inspiration to those who wished to step outside the boundaries of conventional, middle-class gender norms.” 

One of Baker’s lasting legacies is she presented herself and carried herself as a woman. She exemplified both traditionally masculine (unshakable confidence) and traditionally feminine (nurturing warmth) ideals. This allowed her to present as a whole person, to assuredly work within spheres long dominated by men, and to inspire young women in the movement.

“Even though the violation of dominant gender roles may have seemed an awkward form of racial transgression (black women who challenge sexism to this day are sometimes made to feel like betrayers of black men), it was a violation many women in SNCC made in their actions, if not in their verbal or written expressions. This nonsexist climate was attributable in no small measure to Ella Baker’s influence.” 

One remarkable thing about SNCC was its commitment to racial equality as well as gender parity. As a result—and thanks to Baker’s influence—SNCC became a movement that actively included black women and frowned upon sexism.

“Baker was supportive of intensified struggle, increased confrontation, and even sharper, more revolutionary rhetoric. She viewed explicitly antiwhite sentiments, however, as counterproductive, misguided, and shortsighted. She saw some SNCC members’ use of the term ‘honky,’ for example, as unfortunate and born of frustration and anger rather than a calculated political gesture.” 

In the late 1960s, more militant branches of the black power movement were becoming more influential, and Baker—while supportive of revolutionary rhetoric—thought talk that disparaged whites was not helpful to the movement and drove away important white allies.