The spotlight was on Joe Biden as he prepared to accept the Democratic Party nomination for president. His opening speech surprised many when he began by quoting a little known, but extremely important voice in the civil rights movement — Ella Baker.
“Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: ‘Give people light and they will find a way,’” he said, quoting her. “’Give people light’. Those are words for our time. The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.”
Then Biden made a promise inspired by Baker. “I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness,” he said.
He ended his speech by again evoking Baker’s words. He said that “love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. Light is more powerful than dark.” Then he called for “love and hope and light to join in the battle for the soul of the nation.”
So who was she? Here are 10 things you should know about freedom fighter Ella Baker.
Born on Dec. 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Jo Baker grew up in North Carolina listening to her grandmother’s stories about life as a slave. “As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner. Her grandmother’s pride and resilience in the face of racism and injustice continued to inspire Baker throughout her life,” according to the Ella Baker Center website.
While studying at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Baker challenged school policies that she thought were unfair.
After she graduated from college, Baker continued her activism. In fact, she intensified her push for change. In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose goal was to develop Black economic power through collective planning. She also joined several women’s organizations. Baker began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. She worked as a field secretary and as director of branches from 1943 until 1946, according to the Ella Baker Center.
Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money for the civil rights movement in the South, Britannica reported.
In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to help organize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship. By many reports, her relationship with King was tense as she was one of the few women with a strong voice in the movement, according to the Ella Baker Center.
Baker’s influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired — “Fundi,” a Swahili word for a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. She spent a lot of her time mentoring young people in the movement.
Baker like to get out and go straight to the people. She spent the 1940s “traveling from small town to small town, convincing ordinary Black citizens—who had been enslaved and terrorized for more than 200 years—to join together and peaceably insist that they were deserving of basic human rights,” Time reported.
Following the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Black leaders decided to establish a formal organization to build similar boycotts throughout the south. Dr. King was chosen to lead it. But Baker was the person who principally framed the issues and set the group’s agenda, Time reported. Several historians including biographer Barbara Ransby wrote about Baker in her book, “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision,”
Baker went on to work strenuously with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Formed in the early 1960s by Black residents and a few white allies, the party was considered a “brave” political experiment in one of the most racist states in the South. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had three goals — to push the Democratic Party to take a firm stance against racist all-white primaries, defend the right of Black citizens to vote, and showcase the leadership and agency of poor Black southerners, The New YorkTimes reported.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
After resigning from the NAACP in 1946, Baker had moved to Harlem, New York, to raise a niece. Baker remained involved with the NAACP’s New York chapter. In 1952 she was elected its president, the first-ever woman in that role. There, she built coalitions with other groups, worked on a campaign to end school segregation and publicly confronted the mayor, Time reported.
