We Who Believe in Freedom: Ella Baker

 

We who believe in freedom cannot rest

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

 

Until the killing of Black men, 

Black mother's sons

Is as important as the killing of White men 

White mother's sons.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. 

Those of you who know the music of Sweet Honey in the Rock may know the words to this anthem. You may have sung them as you listened along to a recording of it. If you were lucky enough, you may have been inspired as you heard them sing this song in concert. And, if you ever were lucky enough to have heard Sweet Honey in the Rock in concert, you are lucky enough.

This is Ella's Song, named for the brilliant Civil Rights community, grass-roots organizer and strategist, Ms. Ella Josephine ("Ella Jo") Baker. 

 

Ms. Ella Jo Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Georgiana (called Anna) and Blake Baker. In 1910, Norfolk had a race riot in which whites attacked black workers from the shipyard where her father worked. Her mother decided to take the family back to North Carolina while their father continued to work for the steamship company. Ella was seven years old when they returned to her mother's rural hometown near Littleton, North Carolina.

She grew up there, in North Carolina, the middle of three surviving siblings, listening to her grandmother, Josephine Elizabeth "Bet" Ross, and her stories about life under slavery. It was from her grandmother that she learned the full meaning - and the dangers - of resistance and resilience.

As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner. She was punished for her insubordination with hard labor plowing fallow fields. Despite the work, she nevertheless attended every celebration on the plantation, dancing until the early hours of the morning to show that her spirit remained unbowed.

Her grandmother’s pride and resilience in the face of racism and injustice continued to inspire Ms. Ella throughout her life. Her particular talent was assisting people to empower themselves, giving them a context for understanding the injustices Black people continue to face, as her grandmother had provided for her. People in her town knew Ms. Ella Jo as "the whirlwind". Seems she inherited her grandmother's energy level, as well.

Ella's Song contains the words: "That which touches me most is that I had a chance to work with people, passing on to others that which was passed on to me."

Sweet Honey in the Rock

Ms. Ella attended Shaw University in Raleigh, NC. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. After graduating in 1927 as class valedictorian, she moved to New York City and began joining social activist organizations.

During this time, Baker lived with and married her college sweetheart, T. J. (Bob) Roberts. They divorced in 1958. Baker rarely discussed her private life or marital status. According to fellow activist Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, many women in the Civil Rights Movement followed Baker's example, adopting a practice of dissemblance  about their private lives that allowed them to be accepted as individuals in the movement.

It occurs to me that many of the Black women I've known who are leaders in The Episcopal Church, have also adopted this practice of dissemblance, which often raises questions about their sexual orientation. I'm thinking here, especially, of Bishop Barbara Clementine Harris.

Just a few weeks ago, a woman who had graduated from CDSP (Church Divinity School of the Pacific) remarked, as if it were true, that the resistance to Bishop Barbara's election was that not only was she a woman and an African-American, but that she was a lesbian.

I laughed right out loud. There is, of course, nothing in the world wrong with being a lesbian. That said, Barbara Clementine Harris was not a lesbian. Strong? Feisty? Opinionated? Black Feminist/Womanist Liberation Theologian? Check. Check. Check. And, check. Lesbian? Well, we want the best for our leaders, of course, but that was not true of Bishop Barbara. She made up for it by being one of the strongest advocates for LGBTQ+ people in the House of Bishops.

Ella's Song was written as a tribute to Ms. Ella by her friend Bernice Reagon. It contains the words
"I'm a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard.
At times I can be quite difficult, I'll bow to no man's word."

Baker befriended John Henrik Clarke, a future scholar and activist; Pauli Murray, a future writer and civil rights lawyer; and others who became lifelong friends. The Harlem Renaissance influenced her thoughts and teachings. She advocated widespread, local action as a means of social change. Her emphasis on a grassroots approach to the struggle for equal rights influenced the growth and success of the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century.

From Ella's Song: "Struggling myself don’t mean a whole lot, I’ve come to realize,
that teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survives."

Historical highway marker in NC

In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose purpose was to develop black economic power through collective planning. She also involved herself with several women’s organizations. She was committed to economic justice for all people and once said, “People cannot be free until there is enough work in this land to give everybody a job.”

Ms. Ella began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946. Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Ms. Ella co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money to fight against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South.

While serving as Executive Secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)  she organized the founding conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) held at her alma mater, Shaw University, during the Easter weekend of 1960.

She had immediately recognized the potential of the students involved in the Sit-in Movement and wanted to bring leaders of the Movement together to meet one another and to consider future work. Miss Baker, as the students usually called her, persuaded Dr. Martin Luther King to put up the $800 needed to hold the conference. Rev. King hoped they would become an SCLC student wing. Ms Baker, however, encouraged the students to think about forming their own organization.

Addressing the conference, Rev. King asked the students to commit to nonviolence as a way of life, but for most in attendance, nonviolence was simply an effective tactic. Speaking to the conference Ms. Baker told the students that their struggle was “much bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized coke.”

In presenting this bigger picture and encouraging them to form their own organization, Ms. Baker displayed the talents she learned from her grandmother: resistance, resilience and assisting people to empower themselves.  The students decided to form their own organization: SNCC. And with the formation of SNCC, she encouraged the new organization to organize from the bottom up.

From Ella's Song: To me young people come first, they have the courage where we fail.
And if I can but shed some light as they carry us through the gale.

The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
Is when the reins are in the hands of the young, who dare to run against the storm

Committed to achieving racial equality

I think, of all the things I've learned about Ms. Ella Jo Baker, this one fact is the most impressive. I mean, imagine standing up to a giant like MLK, Jr. Imagine being so committed to the principles of resistance, resilience and empowerment, that you stand up for them, even in the face of the sexism known to exist in the Movement, and to the very face of the Leadership of the Civil Rights Movement.

Adopting the Gandhian theory of nonviolent direct action, SNCC members joined with activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to organize the 1961 Freedom Rides.  In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national attention on Mississippi’s racism and to register black voters.

She became president of the NAACP in 1952. In this role, she supervised the field secretaries and coordinated the national office's work with local groups. Baker's top priority was to lessen the organization's bureaucracy and give women more power in the organization; this included reducing Walther Francis White's dominating role as executive secretary.

Baker believed the program should be primarily channeled not through White and the national office, but through the people in the field. She lobbied to reduce the rigid hierarchy, place more power in the hands of capable local leaders, and give local branches greater responsibility and autonomy.

From Ella's Song: Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me. I need to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny. 

She is often referred to as "the unsung hero of the Civil Right's Movement." Ms. Ella's influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: “Fundi,” a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight for human and civil rights until her death on December 13, 1986, her 83rd birthday.

The very first verse of Ella's Song "Until the killing of Black men, Black mother's sons, is as important as the killing of white men, white mother's sons," calls us to remember the systemic nature of racism. Racism not only hurts the people it oppresses, but it causes serious damage to the souls of the oppressor.

Which is why it is so important to remember that Black History is American History. It is critically important that we take at least these 28 days every year to remember and recall and celebrate the contributions of Black people to our history and heritage and culture.

Every year. Every single year.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. 

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.