Categories: Biography, Civil Rights

Place: The South, New York City

Time Period: 1930s-1960s

Barbara Ransby writes a biography of the civil rights leader Ella Barker and uses her as a lens to explore the broader trajectory of the black freedom movement from the 1930s to the 1960s. Baker was one of the most active and well-connected leaders of her time who affiliated herself with dozens of groups but always remained an autonomous "outsider within" that allowed her to voice criticisms and alternative viewpoints. Ransby uses Baker's brand of democratic radicalism to articulate a series of ideological differences within the black freedom movement. First, and most importantly, Baker was a kind of "Gramscian organic intellectual" who believed in relying on the power of oppressed communities for knowledge and leadership. More than just wanting to give the oppressed an equal voice, Baker wanted to actively place them in positions of power and invert the existing leadership hierarchy. In doing so she lobbied for much deeper structural reforms that explicitly paired race with class and moved beyond issues of Jim Crow. This viewpoint was part of a broader division between more middle-class, gradualist leadership of the civil rights movement and grassroots-level organizers. The middle-class leaders embodied by Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP wanted a more centralized leadership structure and focused on national campaigns and issues, often via electoral politics and legal challenges. Baker's viewpoint sought to empower local communities through a decentralized leadership structure that often advocated for more militant and confrontational approaches the the black freedom movement (embodied in SNCC during the early 1960s). Baker also presented an alternative model for gender within the movement - instead of the male-dominated national leadership, Baker was a quiet example of women's leadership and participation for young men and women and served as an early black feminist foremother. Finally, her involvement with more radical positions in the late 1960s echoed a wider shift from earlier gradualism to a more militant ideology of black power and separatism.

Ransby also uses Baker's life to paint a broader context of black activism. Baker grew up in the Progressive Era South as part of a black middle-class family that constituted Glenda Gilmore's "New Men" and "New Women" and W.E.B. Du Bois's "talented tenth." Educated at a private high school and college, Baker could have easily embraced the middle-class moral values of her Baptist mother. Instead, she turned towards a more rebellious side of black activism, which was fostered during the late 1920s and 1930s when she lived in Harlem. Ransby charts the tremendously vibrant black intellectual community operating around Baker during this period, and describes how she turned towards a more radical democratic vision of reform that would serve her the rest of her life. Meanwhile, Ransby also looks at Baker's ambivalent relationship with communism and the effect of the McCarthy era on the black freedom movement - including Baker's reluctant acquiescence in purging the NAACP of communist members.

- Radical democratic practice: oppressed, excluded, powerless had to be actively placed in positions of power, not just given an equal opportunity

- Baker as an "outsider within" the civil rights movement

- Baker as a "Gramscian organic intellectual" - believed in relying on grassroots, oppressed communities for knowledge and leadership

- Highlights divisions or alternative visions within Black Freedom Movement:

     - Emphasis on grassroots organizing rather than electoral politics - local autonomy vs. centralized authority

     - Difference between militant, confrontational tactics of later SNCC and the legal, more gradualist approach of NAACP

     - Ransby uses division between Baker and MLK as emblematic of broader division in movement between more elitist middle-class leadership and those that focused on mobilizing at a grassroots level, often from bottom of social hierarchy

     - Baker offers alternative gender vision for movement - contrasted with more dominant male leaders