Description
In this interview, Ella Baker details her role in establishing the SCLC headquarters in Atlanta and her efforts to move the movement from legalism to mass action. Baker describes how she was drafted by Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levinson to organize the Crusade for Citizenship in 1958, effectively running the organization from a telephone booth and her pocketbook before an office was secured. She provides a critical perspective on the ministerial ego within the SCLC, noting how her status as a non-minister and a woman often made her presence an irritant to the male leadership, including Dr. King. Baker emphasizes that while King provided the eloquence, the movement's true stamina resided in the ordinary women and youth who performed the nitty-gritty work of the struggle.
Baker highlights the organizational genius of Bayard Rustin, who served as a primary strategist alongside her in the SCLC's early years. She explains that Rustin and Levinson were the knowledgeable architects behind the scenes, providing the blueprint for mobilization while King served as the public symbol. Baker also recounts her pivotal role in the formation of SNCC, where she encouraged students to maintain their independence rather than becoming a youth arm of the SCLC. Her narrative underscores a commitment to coalition politics and a belief that leadership must emerge from the masses rather than being dictated from the top down.
Historical Context
The interview captures the revolutionary transition of the movement from the 1954 Brown decision to the direct-action phase of the 1960s. Baker identifies the enduring disappointment of the early SCLC as its failure to fully capitalize on the mass momentum of the Montgomery Bus Boycott due to a reliance on respectability politics and ministerial hierarchies. She views the rise of the student sit-ins as the trigger that forced the older leadership to confront the need for more militant, grassroots engagement.
Baker’s reflections provide a window into the professionalization of the movement, where the need for know-how and stamina often clashed with the charismatic authority of individual leaders. She describes the triple alliance of labor, liberal, and religious forces—brokered by figures like A. Philip Randolph—as the essential mechanism for national impact. Ultimately, Baker’s testimony serves as a blueprint for decentralized, democratic organizing, asserting that the nature of politics in a true democracy requires the empowerment of the people to make their own decisions.
Baker, Ella. Interview by Eugene Walker, September 4, 1974. Interview G-0007. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/playback.html?base_file=G-0007&duration=03:34:21.
