Ella Josephine Baker, Maa Kheru, The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
By Rodney Keith Strong
Presented by Omni-University
Ella Josephine Baker [Maa Kheru] was one of the most influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. She was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 13,1903. Her father, Blake Baker, worked for a steamship line and was often away. In 1910, when she was 7, there was a racist attack on the Black community in Norfolk and her parents decided to move the family back to the Littleton, North Carolina hometown of her mother, Georgiana. Although the racist attack in Norfolk was stoked by racial resentment of Black workers in the shipyard, who earned relatively high wages, her father continued to work for the Norfolk-based steamship line and visit the family in North Carolina whenever he had breaks.
The move to North Carolina allowed her to live with her formerly enslaved maternal grandmother. Her grandmother's stories of the horrors inflicted on enslaved people honed Ella Baker's commitment to racial and social justice.
She attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina and graduated as valedictorian. After college, Ella Josephine Baker moved to New York City and lived in Harlem. She married her college sweetheart, T.J. Roberts and spent her early career working with journalist George Schuyler and later for the Works Progress Administration [WPA]. During this period, now known as the “Harlem Renaissance,” she was friends with John Henrik Clark [Maa Kheru] and became especially close friends with Pauli Murray [Maa Kheru].
In 1938, she became associated with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and,in 1943, rose to the office of National Director of Branches. In her capacity as National Director, she established extensive grassroots relationships with NAACP activists all over the country. After leaving her national post to deal with family issues, she became active in the local NAACP in New York.
After the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott opened a new front in the struggle for civil rights, she attended a conference which led to the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] and became the first staff person of the organization. SCLC was an informal association of preachers across the south which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [ Maa Kheru]. But, it was Ella Baker who provided the structure that made the Southern Christian Leadership Conference an organization !!
Starting in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, and spreading to college campuses across the south SCLC, a grassroots sit-in movement to end racial segregation in public accommodations, took hold among Black college students. In April of 1960, on Easter weekend, SCLC hosted a conference she organized with 126 student delegates from 58 institutions located in 12 states. The conference, held in Raleigh at her alma mater,Shaw University, resulted in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, (SNCC), which became the most influential and militant organization in the Civil Rights movement. She gave what delegates considered to be the most influential speech of the conference in which she urged the students not to affiliate with SCLC but, rather, to chart their own course and to take a grassroots approach to organizing which she preferred. She had already had a front row seat to what she considered to be the "messianic" style of Black leadership. After the formation of SNCC, she resigned from SCLC and worked closely with SNCC.
Ella Baker, urged SNCC to form two wings, one for direct action and one for voter registration. She was instrumental in coordinating the Freedom Rides of 1961 in which students challenged segregation in interstate transportation. She also encouraged SNCC to work with sharecroppers and tenant farmers in communities they targeted across the south. Her motto was, “Strong people don't need strong leaders."
In 1964, Ella Baker helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party(MFDP) . When the MFDP challenged the segregated all-white “official” delegation at the Democratic National Committee, it received national attention. The strong person to emerge from that struggle was Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer [ Maa Kheru] who was the subject of our previous profile.
Considered "The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," Ella Baker [Maa Kheru] remained active in the struggle for racial justice until she joined the Ancestors at the age of 83 on her birthday, December 13, 1986.
Recommended Viewing:
“From Civil Rights to Human Rights, Part 1”
Featuring: Atty. Lawrence E. Kennon Maa Kheru; Dr. Maisha Hamilton and Liane Casten
“From Civil Rights to Human Rights, Part 2” Featuring: Atty. Lawrence E. Kennon, Maa Kheru; Mary L. Johnson; and aCurtis Henderson
Recommended Reading
"Lift As You Climb:The Story of Ella Baker" by Patricia Hruby Powell
"Freedom's Daughters:The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement 1830-1970" by Lynne Oslon
"Freedom Cannot Rest: Ella Baker and the Civil Rights Movement" by Lisa Frederiksen Bohannon
"Ella Baker: Community Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement" by Todd Moye
"Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision" by Barbara Ransby
"We Who Believe in Freedom: The Life and Times of Ella Baker" by Lea Williams, Young Reader Series
"Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes ( The History of the Civil Rights Movement" by Shyrlee Dallard
"Ella Baker: The Forgotten Female Voice…"
J Todd Moye TV