Summary Of Ella Baker And The Black Freedom Movement By Barbara Ransby

An advocate of “fundamental social transformation”, this belief, combined with Ella Baker’s consistent confidence of change beginning within the local people of the movement, paved her path to becoming a life-time activist for civil liberties and equality among all Americans. (194) While she may be renown amongst Civil Rights enthusiasts, Baker’s involvement and impact on the movement remains relatively unknown to the majority of Americans. Barbara Ransby’s book Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement attempts to end this silence, and does so very convincingly. Throughout her book, Ransby points out example-after-example of how Baker is either directly or indirectly involved with many of the Civil Rights Movement’s most famous moments – creation of the NAACP, freedom rides, the SCLC, Birmingham, Albany, the SNCC, etc. After reading about her dedication and the sacrifices she made for the

As Ransby states, she was “also passionately committed to a broader humanitarian struggle for a better world.” (5) A visionist, Baker believed this transformation could only occur through a “democratic, cooperative, and localized movement that valued the participation of each of its individual members… [This] was the bedrock of her political vision.”

As she notes, Baker’s first real exposure to politics occurred at Shaw University in North Carolina when she “challenged the school’s conservative dress code, criticized the paternalistic racism of its president, and protested its methods of teaching religion and the Bible.” (59) After leaving Shaw, Baker would continue her political career, which included positions within the three most prominent civil rights groups in the nation – the NAACP, SCLC, and SNCC. While the positions she held in the NAACP and SCLC were revolutionary for its time, it was her work with the SNCC that created the legacy of Ella