Ellla Baker: An underappreciated force in the fight for civil rights
By Robert Lopez Special to the News & Record Feb 25, 2018

Ella Baker helped Martin Luther King Jr. draw up the blueprint for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She played a role in organizing the sit-in movement of the early 1960s.

She served as a mentor to a generation of civil rights leaders.

But, as author Lea Williams says, “What people know about her now is very little.”

Williams is looking to shed some light on Baker’s legacy with a new book, “We Who Believe in Freedom: The Life and Times of Ella Baker.”

“She’s one of those people whose name may ring a bell to folks of a certain generation,” Williams said. “But many of the women (in the civil rights movement) simply were overlooked. They were the people behind the scenes, though, doing much of the administrative work of organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And Ella Baker did some critical work.”

Williams’ book is the second in a series titled “True Tales for Young Readers,” published by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History. The 90-page volume is geared toward middle and high school students.

Williams, a former administrator at Bennett College and N.C. A&T, now teaches English as a second language at Guilford Technical Community College. She first became interested in Ella Baker’s story in the mid-1990s while researching for her first book, “Servants of the People: The 1960s Legacy of African American Leadership.”

Born in Norfolk, Va., in 1903, Baker grew up in Littleton, N.C., and attended Shaw University in Raleigh. From an early age, she found herself rebelling against the status quo, pressing the case for a group of students at Shaw who were seeking to change the dress code for women.

In the 1920s she moved to Harlem and over the next decade became involved with various efforts to empower the black community. She eventually became a field secretary for the NAACP, and in 1943 took the role of national director of branches for the organization. Under her direction, Williams notes, membership increased ninefold.

“She believed you needed to find out what people in the community wanted to fight for,” Williams said. “The NAACP worked mainly through churches, had people come together in churches. Baker went out into the field, she went to barber shops and beauty parlors. She would go to pool rooms and gas stations, anywhere people gathered. She looked for the folks that people in the community listened to.”

Because of her community organizing skills, she was chosen to be part of a three-person team that helped set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the wake of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

A few years later, after four black N.C. A&T students sat at Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro to protest its whites-only lunch counter, she oversaw a conference of sit-in leaders at Shaw University.

“She wanted them to come together to get to know one another, to be able to network and to discuss the kinds of tactics that were successful in the sit-ins,” Williams said. “And she encouraged them to found an organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.”

In spite of her organizing skills, though, she also encountered a good deal of sexism.

“At the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, they overlooked her twice in searching for a director,” Williams said. “She was quite outspoken, and that rubbed some people the wrong way. She was often at the table, was vocal when she was there. But it was the men whose decisions ruled.”

Even so, through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, she was able to cultivate a number of up-and-coming leaders, including Julian Bond, who went on to lead the NAACP; John Lewis, who would be elected to Congress; and Diane Nash, who helped organize the voting rights movement in Alabama.

“She always made education and training a component of what she did,” Williams said. “She felt even if you had people who were natural leaders and respected in the community, they still needed leadership development. And students, they benefited so much from her knowledge and wisdom. Many chose careers in civil rights and social service because of her.”

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Ellla Baker: An underappreciated force in the fight for civil rights

By Robert Lopez Special to the News & Record Feb 25, 2018


Who was Ella Baker?
Dr. Lea Williams sheds some light on Baker’s legacy with her new book, “We Who Believe in Freedom: The Life and Times of Ella Baker.”

Ella Baker helped Martin Luther King Jr. draw up the blueprint for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She played a role in organizing the sit-in movement of the early 1960s. She served as a mentor to a generation of civil rights leaders. But, as author Lea Williams says, “What people know about her now is very little.”

Williams is looking to shed some light on Baker’s legacy with a new book, “We Who Believe in Freedom: The Life and Times of Ella Baker.”

“She’s one of those people whose name may ring a bell to folks of a certain generation,” Williams said. “But many of the women (in the civil rights movement) simply were overlooked. They were the people behind the scenes, though, doing much of the administrative work of organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And Ella Baker did some critical work.”

Williams’ book is the second in a series titled “True Tales for Young Readers,” published by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History. The 90-page volume is geared toward middle and high school students.

Williams, a former administrator at Bennett College and N.C. A&T, now teaches English as a second language at Guilford Technical Community College. She first became interested in Ella Baker’s story in the mid-1990s while researching for her first book, “Servants of the People: The 1960s Legacy of African American Leadership.”

Born in Norfolk, Va., in 1903, Baker grew up in Littleton, N.C., and attended Shaw University in Raleigh. From an early age, she found herself rebelling against the status quo, pressing the case for a group of students at Shaw who were seeking to change the dress code for women.

In the 1920s she moved to Harlem and over the next decade became involved with various efforts to empower the black community. She eventually became a field secretary for the NAACP, and in 1943 took the role of national director of branches for the organization. Under her direction, Williams notes, membership increased ninefold.

“She believed you needed to find out what people in the community wanted to fight for,” Williams said. “The NAACP worked mainly through churches, had people come together in churches. Baker went out into the field, she went to barber shops and beauty parlors. She would go to pool rooms and gas stations, anywhere people gathered. She looked for the folks that people in the community listened to.”

Because of her community organizing skills, she was chosen to be part of a three-person team that helped set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the wake of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

A few years later, after four black N.C. A&T students sat at Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro to protest its whites-only lunch counter, she oversaw a conference of sit-in leaders at Shaw University.

“She wanted them to come together to get to know one another, to be able to network and to discuss the kinds of tactics that were successful in the sit-ins,” Williams said. “And she encouraged them to found an organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.”

In spite of her organizing skills, though, she also encountered a good deal of sexism.

“At the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, they overlooked her twice in searching for a director,” Williams said. “She was quite outspoken, and that rubbed some people the wrong way. She was often at the table, was vocal when she was there. But it was the men whose decisions ruled.”

Even so, through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, she was able to cultivate a number of up-and-coming leaders, including Julian Bond, who went on to lead the NAACP; John Lewis, who would be elected to Congress; and Diane Nash, who helped organize the voting rights movement in Alabama.

“She always made education and training a component of what she did,” Williams said. “She felt even if you had people who were natural leaders and respected in the community, they still needed leadership development. And students, they benefited so much from her knowledge and wisdom. Many chose careers in civil rights and social service because of her.”