Essay: Ella Baker (Ransby)

Historically for many years when looking at the Civil rights movement we have often only payed attention to the men. One of the most prominent of them all is that captivating leader we call Mr. Luther King, Jr. Every so often the only woman we do get to hear about is Rosa Parks. However what about the other voices of women that no one really takes the time out to pay attention to.
The controversy around the role African American women play in ministry, the church, and society has always been an ongoing issue. Seclusion, separation, burdened, invisible, uninvited, lack of self-assurance, and self- reliance are the many things they have had to deal with. For black women in America living has not always been the easiest task, however, black women for many have been the backbone. The backbone in the communities they live in, the backbone in the churches they attend, and the backbone in many vital movements in society.
One of these women, who can be considered to be a backbone, who has been an inspiration to the countless individuals she came in contact with during, and the numerous people that were encouraged after her life, and a voice that is often missing and over looked, is Ella Baker. In this intensive biography, Ransby takes intentional time to show Ella Baker’s governmental career as an coordinator, her intelligence as a woman of color, a teacher, and the influence of her family.
The professing and lived out faith of Ella Baker served as the catalyst of her humanist methodology to civil rights, crowning her as the matriarch and midwife of the Civil Rights movement. Through the lenses of Barabra Ransby, in Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, we get to see how Ella Baker’s spirituality, virtuous discontent, structured anxiety, and ethical leadership led to her to becoming that backbone and bridged leader in the Civil Rights Movement. We furthermore get to see the basic struggles that came with being an African American women who was willing to sacrifice much to be on the battlefields fighting for justice. Whose place in society was questioned. Whose gender was challenged, and whose voice many times often sought out to be shut.
In the first few chapters we get some insight on Ella Baker’s early childhood; exclusively the role that the women she grew up around played in her becoming “Ella Baker”, her education, and her communal work.
Ella Baker as a child spent most of her time growing up around African Americans who were richly deeply religious individuals, most of who were women.  For Ella Baker, most of the women she seemed to be around were women who actively were serving their communities. It was the Baptist Religion and missionary work of Ella Baker’s mother’s life that drove her later activeness in the community and her love for Baptist religion.  She had the opportunity to watch her mom and other educated black southern women make change. Specifically through the one of the organizations that were formed in the 1900s, the National Black Baptist Women Convention.   This convention was composed of mainly African American women missionaries, who paid much attention to the role they played serving their church and community in whatever way it looked like.  According to the missionary movement of the southern Baptist movement, it was imperative to help others, it was their duty, and through her mother that was exemplified.  It was not only the mission work of her mom and the those women that ignited that fire to be on the ground and serve in Ella, but it was also her relationship with her grandfather who was a preacher as well, a man who spiritually fed his community, and also fought for the injustices of African Americans.   And although these thing did not completely mold her to be that radical activist, they inspired her, it shaped her egalitarian views for a better society. And also allowed her to see that as an African American women she was fit enough to bring change to society.
In Between Sundays, Frederick seeks to explore the direct connection between spirituality  and the idea of expressing spirituality that led black women to get involved in activism.  Frederick also suggest that the significance of spirituality on the lives of women; religiousness is seen as fundamental to one experiences. Religiousness is key because it gives life experiences more of a significant meaning.  Religiousness proposed understanding of life experiences and an answer through one’s understanding of faith, which can produce appreciation, empathy which in turn leads to activism.   From a child Ella Bakers involvement in church and with her spirituality offered this for her.
In shedding some light into her education and some community work, Ransby tells us that Ella Bakers time at Shaw Academy and  Shaw University – Baptist school –  was the ladder to her political development.  It was at Shaw that she organized her first protest against the unjust college administrators.  She contested with the schools old-fashioned dress code, had much to say about the patriarchal racism that came from the president of the school, and opposed its methods on religious teaching and the bible.  Ransby states that being at Shaw gave Ella Baker the skills and self-confidence, that would later allow her to be able to operate within meetings and organizations that were fairly often male dominated.  While at school she never forgot the practices and missionary work learned from her mom, and engaged in things that were relatively close to it at times.  However, she went on to reject what was expected of her from her mom and society as a educated African American women.  Briefly in chapters four and five, Ransby covers the civic work of Ella Baker’s life. Where Ella Baker served as staff of the NAACP, this was during the time of World War II. She traveled putting together local branches all while encouraging the leaders to be more active.  Some years later, after leaving, she was elected as the president of the New York City Branch of NAACP where she was the first women to become president.  Ransby also pays attention to Ella Bakers involvement around school reform and the gruesome police brutality that was happening in New York City during her time as president.  In addition to that work, she also helped form a relationship between the African American and Puerto Rican communities.
Through her childhood, time at Shaw, and commitment to her community work, Ransby allows us a glimpse of how Ella Baker’s spirituality and her devout beliefs led to her virtuous discontent and structured anxiety which in turn, led her to move into the public atmosphere of activism and become that bridged leader that was needed. Furthermore, she strived and worked diligently to ground programs that were centered and focused on human dignity and respect of fellow African Americans, especially those who were poor, neglected, and disadvantaged.
In Walter Fluker’s Ethical Leadership book , he suggest that the juncture has two separate sections that consist of public and private. The private juncture is personal, intimate and spiritual.  The public section of the two sections can be identified as such,  “…people meeting and interacting in intentional dialect and actions about imperative values; where they are not afraid to hold each other accountable for what they are aware of and find true to them. Subject matters that touch the bases of class, sexuality, race, gender, ethnicity, religion form and inform the understanding and motivation of behavior. Thus meaning the public and private sections must connect somehow.”  For Fluker, one who can be identified as an ethical leader is one whose lifestyle, practices, and particular traditions have molded them and is referenced to the worries of the public.
When we look at Ransby telling of Ella Baker’s life, this same idea that Fluker presents can explain her reasons for her further involvement in the Civil Rights movement. Baker felt and understood the importance in connecting the public and private in order to do significant work.  In the remaining half of the this biography, Ransby highlights Baker’s political sojourn. We get to see the role she played In the SCLC, her role and impact she had in founding SNCC and the influence she had on the young activist she mentored, and one I found most interesting; the relationship between her and Martin Luther King., Jr.   Ella Baker’s time with the SCLC one can conclude from Ransby wasn’t the easiest. She was not content there at all, it had been emotional, physical, political taxing for her.  Ransby tell us that Ella Baker was not happy with the things that were going on within the organization. While they were aware of her skill set, they however were not willing to affirm her as a good leader.  Thus leading to her reluctance about Dr. King as a leader. Ransby states that, Ella Baker indeed felt that King was a talented man, however she felt that King did not identify closely enough with the people he was trying serve.  Even with that barrier it did not stop her from continuing to do the civil work she felt led to do. Baker went on to mentor a new group of young activist in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And until her timely death worked to fight for the injustices of African Americans.
To capture the depth and life of the renown Ella Baker is impossible, but Ransby does an awesome job showing her civility and her commitment to the lives of her people. Baker’s faith and spirituality allowed her to see the many face of her neighbors, and allowed her to pay attention to them, through the continued pushing of equality, and getting over the hurdles of being in a male dominated sector.