Ella Baker: Community Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement

(Paperback)

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Description

Ella Josephine Baker (1903-1986) was among the most influential strategists of the most important social movement in modern US history, the Civil Rights Movement, yet most Americans have never heard of her. Behind the scenes, she organized on behalf of the major civil rights organizations of her daythe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)among many other activist groups. As she once told an interviewer, [Y]ou didnt see me on television, you didnt see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put pieces together out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people dont need strong leaders.

Rejecting charismatic leadership as a means of social change, Baker invented a form of grassroots community organizing for social justice that had a profound impact on the struggle for civil rights and continues to inspire agents of change on behalf of a wide variety of social issues.
In this book, historian J. Todd Moye masterfully reconstructs Bakers life and contribution for a new generation of readers. Those who despair that the civil rights story is told too often from the top down and at the dearth of accessible works on women who helped shape the movement will welcome this new addition to the Library of African American Biography series, designed to provide concise, readable, and up-to-date lives of leading black figures in American history.

Reviews

I give it...my highest recommendation. -- John David Smith, professor, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
In this beautifully written, perceptive, and engaging biography, J. Todd Moye introduces a new generation of Americans to Ella Baker, whose ideas and example inspired black and white activists during the Civil Rights years. Her conviction that social movements should be based on grass-roots involvement and group-centered leadership is as relevant today as it was a half century ago. -- John Dittmer, DePauw University
Todd Moye's lively, engaging narrative balances vivid storytelling with thoughtful analysis for a compelling introduction to Ella Baker, arguably the most important leader-organizer-strategist of the 20th Century Black Freedom Struggle. Thanks to Moye's marvelous biography, many more people will know Baker and have a sense, not only of how essential she was to movements for racial justice and human rights, but how much we still have to learn from her. -- Emilye Crosby, author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi

Author Bio

J. Todd Moye is associate professor of history at the University of North Texas and the author of Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen in World War II (Oxford 2010) and Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945-1986 (University of North Carolina Press 2004).