Ella Baker
On December 13, 1903, Ella Josephine Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, to Blake Baker, a waiter on the Norfolk steamer line and Georgiana Ross, also known as Anna. Ella was the middle of three surviving children, Blake Curtis and Maggie. Ella‟s maternal grandparents owned a farm while her paternal grandparents were tenant farmers, all four brought up under slavery. Anna was very religious, strict with the children and head of the family since Blake traveled a great deal. The household was female-oriented, bolstered by relatives and community. Ella‟s mom was a teacher, which she continued with her offspring in speech, writing and grammar. Because of the status of the family, Maggie, Ella and Blake were blessed with education rather than farm duties that plagued less fortunate children on farms.
Anna took the children to missionary meetings, which were formed so that women would have their own voice.
Occasionally Ella participated in the program, reading poems as well as from the Bible. Faith was emphasized as well as the application of religion to life, especially Christian charity. In that regard, the association helped in church-affiliated schools in the area, provided scholarships to black colleges, sponsored an orphanage and aided the elderly and sick. The missionary goal also included challenging segregation, proposing laws against lynching and working in favor of temperance.
Anna set a great example for Ella and her siblings by her service to others. Renting a farmhouse on Baker property, the Powell family suffered a great setback when the mother died. Ella regularly visited the children, doing motherly tasks, even carrying laundry back home for her mom to handle. Another time, on one of Ella‟s wandering, she noticed that Mandy Bunk, whose parents were mentally ill, was on their porch bleeding. Ella rushed home for assistance. These were two examples of helping others, no matter what the color of one‟s skin or what one is. This would be carried on for the rest of Ella‟s life.
Ella Jo may have been blessed with an affluent home, but the family was always concerned for others, especially the less fortunate. The middle child also came to see that the role of women went beyond that of motherhood and duties in the home.
She had no interest in marriage or having children, the latter feeling possibly reinforced by her mother‟s five losses, one of a child in infancy and miscarriages or stillbirths for the others. She didn't always do what was expected in feminine behavior, but she was a peacemaker, which I‟ll get into later.
Though she was born in Virginia, Ella and her brother and sister grew up in Littleton, North Carolina, which was more accommodating that Norfolk. Anna figured Littleton had better educational opportunities as well as less racism. Because of his job, Blake lived in Norfolk. While Ella was visiting him, a young white boy called her xxxxxx so she began punching him. Her father‟s intervention ended the pummeling. The son of a white sheriff in Littleton hurled a racial slur at Ella and this time she responded with a few rocks. She also chased him off the street. Ella defended her brother Blake and stood up to the bullies, only occasionally abandoning a fight.
The Baker children attended a two-room school in Littleton run by Mr. Lonzie Weaver. While there, Ella found a new love in baseball, which she loved playing. Boys and girls played at recess on the same team and Ella would eat lunch on the way to school so she could play baseball. After this school, Ella was sent to boarding school at Shaw Academy in Raleigh.
She would then go on to Shaw University in Raleigh. There she was enrolled in the journalism curriculum, where she became the youngest writer for the Shaw University Journal, the campus paper. She became its editor in 1925 with her mentor, Professor Benjamin Brawley, who was also the faculty advisor. Her grades were As and Bs in her writing classes and she excelled as a speaker in addition to her fine writing. Through this writing she had a chance to ask questions about many subjects. Without the journalism, she may not have had the chance to satisfy her curiosity.
At Shaw she was a rebel, but not quite a radical. That would come later. Ella didn't shy away from protesting as she stood up to others, even authority, but with some caution. At the school were many students from countries like Puerto Rico, Sierra Leone, Jamaica, the Congo, South Africa, Liberia, the Philippines and Canada. White students weren't at Shaw until 1954. She may not have left the country, but the world experience came her way through others. On graduation day in April 1927, she was one of two valedictorians, where she showed her activism, idealism, commitment to her religion and social justice. She would soon be on her way to New York City.
Martha Grinage was a cousin who lived in the Big Apple, with whom Ella could stay. Before Ella arrived there, she worked at a roadhouse – a resort with a restaurant and entertainment. It was for a short time, but the staff included students, actors and business types. She found the clientele as well as the workers to be eclectic and colorful. When she did arrive in New York to stay with Martha, she was more entranced with the political life than by the nightlife. She had to find a job, but was turned down many times. She secured one in Greenwich Village as a waitress at New York University‟s Judson House. Since her coverage was only for dinner and lunch, she had free time to walk around the area, which she cherished. Just as the women around her at home greatly influenced life, so did her time in college and the days she spent in Greenwich Village and Harlem.
At the Harlem library, she helped establish the first Negro History Club. She also organized a discussion on lynching. In 1933 Ella joined the Adult Education Committee of the library and the next year became an employee of the library. She and her friends also congregated at the YWCA discussing black issues and those of women. With Marvel Cooke she wrote the article “The Bronx Slave Market”, chronicling the struggle of women to land work as domestics for a day. Baker was a political journalist who would write for the West Indian News, Crisis, National News, Amsterdam News and the Norfolk Journal and Guide, all African American periodicals. Her other job was political organizing.
One of the most important ventures Ella worked on was the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL.) In 1931, Baker shared the platform in Pittsburgh with publisher Robert Vann and socialist George Schuyler at the group‟s first conference. She emphasized the role of black women in the movement. George would become the first president of the YNCL and Ella would become its national director. YNCL was a way to have common people – the workers – benefit from profits, rather have capitalists grabbing most of them. Schuyler would insist that the suffering of African American people could largely be blamed on capitalism. In the years to come, cooperatives would play a large role in society, just as they do today.
After college, she resisted becoming a teacher because she saw its flaws, since students weren't learning. Teachers may have stayed on board only to receive a paycheck every two weeks. They were condescending and felt above the students, which was not the attitude Baker took. She also felt the need of more parent involvement.
Ella knew T. J. Bob Roberts from college and the two married sometime in the early 1930s, despite her feelings about these unions. Roberts was a fighter and political activist and he respected her work. I doubt that they threw food at each other, probably because they didn't see much of each other. Very few people knew of the matrimony, maybe not even the FBI. She was being watched but the spies assumed that T. J. was a close relative. Perhaps FBI stands for Fantastically Brilliant and Intelligent. Baker and Roberts divorced in 1958. When he died a few years afterwards, Ella and her niece Jackie attended his funeral. Just as she didn't forget her friends, she didn't write him off.
Though her family was financially well off, Baker herself struggled to earn a living, despite all her work. John Henrik Clarke said, Ella was always broke and always borrowing money from one friend or another. Ella wrote letters to the American League for Peace and Democracy and the New York Housing Authority for work with no luck. She was turned down for a loan from a charity in New York at a time of desperation. For her, money was never an issue. She considered writing her memoir but never did. She had the title, though, Making A Life, Not Making A Living.
A bit of cash came her way from her writing. She took on the role of consumer education teacher with the Workers Education Project. Her goal was to have the program available for the poor, especially blacks. Concerns were for those seeking work, Pullman car porters, sales clerks, domestics, clothing and transport workers. Teachers learned as they taught, even from their pupils. It was something that Ella emphasized, a process that she would do throughout her life, saying, the aim is not education for its own sake, but education that leads to self-directed action.
As Fascism made its way through Europe, Baker joined the NAACP as an assistant field secretary. The war she would be fighting was against racism in America. While Ella was there, in 1940 membership in the NAACP was 50,000. It reached 450,000 five years later. Ella always did what was right and just. Fear never seemed to bother her and she talked to everyone, friend or foe. While on a membership drive in Baltimore for the Association, she ventured into night clubs and beer gardens, which prompted this response: You certainly have some nerve coming in here, talking, but I’m going to join that doggone organization.
Branch president Herbert Marshall was impressed with Ella, saying I predict for her a very brilliant future as a member of our NAACP family. Associate E. Frederic Morrow stated that Baker‟s success in the past few months with the Association has been phenomenal. Shirley Graham, the wife of W. E. B. Du Bois, praised Baker with great respect as a democratizing force in the group. Like groups Ella joined, she moved on to others but learned a great deal from the NAACP. She would become associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) and more than three-dozen other organizations.
No matter what group she helped, her job was challenging and dangerous as she spent time doing fieldwork in the shadow of the Klan. Somehow, she felt at ease in the South – something like the lamb lying down with the lion, I suppose. Working with those less fortunate than her, especially in the area of education, didn't bother her in the least. She won the trust of whomever she came in contact. All her efforts were a movement in ridding the South of racism, lynching, murders and fire bombings – close to an insurmountable task. She knew that even though people struggled, they would vote, if they could be registered. They would also fight back, despite the danger that involved. Her organizing was a validation that leadership originated from the people, not from the ministers at the top, who were too far removed to witness what the unfortunate were enduring.
Baker listened to the citizens, probably more than speaking to them. She never talked down to people, whether they were tenant farmers or associates, becoming one with them. She and her comrades in the SNCC – she was accused of being a commie, but she wasn't – would pick cotton if the natives were doing it. Their group had no leaders. They all worked towards the goal of the betterment of mankind. Baker would travel in the cars of her coworkers even if the heater didn't work. On one occasion, there was a shortage of beds and she was offered one for the night while someone would sleep on the floor. She would have none of that and instead shared the bed with that person.
Baker fit in with the others, dressing plainly. She didn't dress like a homeless person, but her attire was unlike that of the preacher or some of the higher-ups in the NAACP. Some of those ministers she had issues with. While doing fieldwork, a woman would say to her, your dress is just like mine, affirming an identification with Ella. Referring to wearing minks, Baker‟s thoughts were I didn’t own any – didn’t want any. One luxury she afforded herself was buying hats, which she loved.
Baker never excluded anyone. Some of the others wanted nothing to do with white people or wealthy blacks, but she knew that all should be included. Her concerns were with all people, especially the suffering of Native Americans, poor whites and Mexican Americans.
While we are tugging at our own bootstraps, we must realize that our interests are more often than not identical to that of others. We must recognize the identity of interests, work with other groups . . . [and yet not sacrifice our interests to that of the larger cause]. A difficult but unavoidable task.
Anna Ross envisioned her daughter being a teacher or missionary, but Ella went a different route with her life. Actually she did a great job instructing others while challenging them to come up with answers themselves. She had a mission and she carried it out in the best tradition. Ella worked for numerous groups, but felt the movement was more important than the organization. She had disagreements with people, who displayed egotistical motives. Even so, she engaged all her associates as she worked for the benefit of the underprivileged and downtrodden. Her concern may have been on a local level, but it went beyond that to an internationalist outlook.
Baker had a great deal to do with the sit-in of February 1, 1960. It started when four black students sat down at a counter in the Woolworth‟s in Greensboro, North Carolina, which was restricted to whites. It took a few days, but eventually they were served. All they wanted was a Whopper. Within a few months, this action spread to over one hundred cities with violence, arrests and counter demonstrations. Social networks had arrived way before the twenty-first century, even without the Internet. It‟s unfortunate that many of those groups of today aren‟t more concerned about social justice rather than minutiae.
Many thought Baker was a feminist but she couldn‟t have been one since their time hadn't yet come. Actually she went beyond that designation. She was a humanist who worked for democratic change, mobilization of the masses and grassroots activism. She never cared much for convention and stood for the rights of all humanity, especially that of women. She did what was right and just according to her conscience. By the end of 1920, amendments to the Constitution gave all people the right to vote, which Ella endorsed. Sadly, some were still prohibited from doing so, and this created another cause for the Civil Rights Movement.
Baker worked non-stop and should have taken more vacations, but there was so much to be done. She was on the side of the unions and believed everyone had a right to an education – certainly one unlike that at the time, but following her ideas and practices. Ella was against all wars, against police brutality and lynching. Just like Martin Luther King, Jr., her work embraced non-violence, but she felt people had a right to defend themselves if they were attacked. She didn't accept killing, murder and fire bombing as retaliations for acts of injustice. Baker‟s beliefs were an inspiration for the misunderstood Black Panther Party in the late 1960s.
She had a great effect on others – those she worked alongside and those who heard her speak. Staff person for the American Friends Service Committee, Max Heirich, was impressed, saying: she spoke simply but beautifully. It was as if she was speaking right to you about such large and important issues. She was much more effective than the men. Diane Nash was involved in the sit-ins and was impressed by Baker‟s oratory skills, hoping to be able to do what Ella was doing. Eventually Nash became a leader and carried on her mentor‟s work. There were many others: Bob Moses; Jane Stem bridge; Connie Curry; Anne and Carl Braden; Dorothy and C. O. Simpkins; Ruby and Fred Shuttles worth.
Richmond branch president John M. Tinsley said this of Ella: One of the most important and wonderful things that has happened to Richmond was the presence of the national field worker, Miss Ella J. Baker. James Forman in 1972 said: Throughout the decade of the sixties, many people helped to ignite or were touched by the creative fire of SNCC without appreciating the generating force of Ella Jo Baker. Odetta Harper Hines, an NAACP associate, said Baker was an extraordinary woman, a powerful speaker who talked without notes from her heart to the hearts of her audience. Her speeches were to the point – very warm and human. Bob Moses added, what Ella Baker did for us, we did for the people of Mississippi. Friend Pauli Murray wrote: I’ve seen Ella in action and they don’t come finer. Labor organizer John LeFlore spoke to Baker: All of us here and people throughout the country whom we have talked to, and who love you, have nothing but praise for your work. We have grown to love you. Pauli Murray described her as the gal who I think has done so much for spearheading the revolutionary movement among Negroes in the South. Stokely Carmichael mentioned that Baker was just so overwhelming and ubiquitous in SNCC that it seems as if she was always present.
Some of her sayings include:
Give people light and they will find a way.
The Negro must quit looking for a savior, and work to save himself.
I didn’t break the rules, but I challenged the rules.
Awake youth of the land and accept this noble challenge of salvaging the strong ship of civilization by the anchors of right, justice and love.
I never worked for an organization but for a cause. One of the major emphases of SNCC, from the beginning, was that of working with indigenous people, not working for them, but trying to develop their capacity for leadership.
Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.
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 sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.
On December 13, 1986, Ella died on her eighty-third birthday in New York. The United States Postal Service honored her with a postage stamp in 2009. You can read more about this great activist in the 2003 book by Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker & The Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision.