A Look at "Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement'.
While overall the book Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement reads as being dry, somewhat emotionally detached and like a text book, it does not diminish the incredible work, strength, knowledge, leadership and life of Ella Josephine Baker overall this book has greatly broadened my knowledge of the incredible force that was Ella Baker.
Author Barbra Ransby begins by going into great detail about how Ella Baker was first molded by the careful life her parents and family built up around her and the community service and charity that was an integral and emphasized everyday part of her childhood. Baker's beginnings of being an orator and protestor can be traced to Ella Baker's schooling: from her careful tutelage in grammar and writing, to her studies at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC where she challenged the administration on several areas of disagreement. From then on after graduating from Shaw her community organizing and protesting career continued to grow and snowball as Baker worked for the betterment of African Americans no matter the social or class background, with a particular focus on the
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Her mother was an incredible driving force in Ella Baker's childhood. Not only had she taught Baker and her younger siblings to read and write before entering school, she also instilled in them a sense of community involvement that had always been a strong part of her own family background. Along with her mother, Ella Baker's grandmother also played a key role in her life telling young Ella stories of her life as a slave and instilling in her a sense of pride in her heritage and race. A key point that Ransby also writes of is the community among the women working with the NAACP; how they "seemed to look out for each other" and of their largely unacknowledged and uncelebrated