Summer Fellowship: One of the Most Important Civil Rights Leaders You’ve Never Heard Of

Submitted by Richard Burden on August 5, 2008 - 4:44pm.

I’ve just completed my eight week Fellowship at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, CA. It’s an organization I’ve long admired, and serving there this summer has been one of the most profound experiences I’ve had in seminary. But in order to really understand why I say that, it’s important to know a little bit about what the Ella Baker Center (EBC) does and in order to understand that you need to know a little about EBC’s namesake. I’m well educated, and most of the people I hang with are likewise heavily degreed. But most people have never heard of Ella Baker, or like me simply assumed that she was an important figure in the Civil Rights movement—a name I might have heard in ninth grade civics but promptly forgot. A name like far too many other female names in history that have gone either unrecorded, unnamed (a unnamed companion in the New Testament?—probably a woman), or have been effectively erased by the overabundance of male names.

Ella Josephine Baker (1903-1986) was indeed a significant leader of the Civil Rights movement, but that’s a little like saying that yeast is a significant ingredient in bread. Ella worked largely behind the scenes for over 50 years organizing communities and working with and influencing figures such as W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and Stokely Carmichael. Her work helped shape and transform the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to name only the most prominent. Under Baker’s leadership the SNCC coordinated the famous “freedom rides” of the early 60s. She remained a forceful activist until her death in 1986. Her nickname was “Fundi” a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. I can get behind that kind of “fundi.”

Part of why most of us have never heard of Ella Baker is because she was wary of charismatic leadership and insisted that, “strong people don’t need strong leaders.” She saw her task as “getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use.” She also knew that it was the movement that formed leaders, and not the other way around. Too often we all fall prey to the pernicious idea that if “we” only had a leader, a galvanizing national candidate, a compelling and charismatic spokesperson THEN “we” could really make the world a better place. Ella Baker challenged people of her generation, and continues to challenge us to realize that WE are the leaders “we’ve” been waiting for. Come to think of it, that's awfully like the message of the Beatitudes. Don’t sit around waiting for the “blessed ones” to arrive and show you the way; you have the power, you have what you need, blessed are YOU. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Which reminds me of something else Ella used to say, “Give light and people will find the way.”

I’ve just spent eight weeks working with people who put Ella’s ideas into practice every day. Some of them are Christians; many of them are not, but they all live out a Beatitudes vision of the world by functioning as catalyst and convener. EBC is light, and salt, and yeast to the people they work with. There are those at EBC who work with families whose lives have been ripped apart by violence by engaging them through the Bay Area Police Watch and the Silence the Violence campaigns. There are those who work with families and youths who have been incarcerated in the dreadful California Youth Authority prison system through the Books Not Bars campaign. And there are those, like me, who worked with state legislators, city officials, business and labor leaders, community and environmental activists on EBC’s Green-Collar Jobs campaign. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post. All of these campaigns have a simple but powerful focus, they all seek JUSTICE in the system, OPPORTUNITY in our cities and PEACE in our streets. That sounds like a Beatitudes vision to me.

Here in some of Ella’s own words, interpreted through the artistry of Bernice Johnson Reagon (someone else deeply influenced by “Fundi”) is “Ella’s Song” performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

For more info on Ella Jo, or the EBC check out this link