Ella Baker was a founding member of the SCLC, the Southern Leadership Conference. After that Ella Baker organized the SNCC, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
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ELLA BAKER BIRTH'S THE SNCC
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they had been denied service.
Having difficulties with competitive, authoritarian leadership (sexist too, according to Septima Clarke) at the SCLC Baker left organization after these Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist these new student activists as she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement.
Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born.
Having run a voter registration campaign called the "Crusade for Citizenship" earlier in her civil rights career, she incorporated the voter registration of rural blacks as one of SNCC's goals. Students from SNCC went out into black communities that had never really been tapped into before by more middle class groups like N.A.A.C.P. and the SCLC. Many black people in these areas had to be told they had the right to vote in the first place. And one of those black people that SNCC made aware of their own voting rights was Fannie Lou Hamer.
Hamer would go on to speak at a televised democratic convention. And millions of people around the world would hear her tell the story of white efforts to keep black people from the polls.
Adopting the Gandhian theory of nonviolent direct action, SNCC members joined with activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to organize in the 1961 Freedom Rides.
In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national attention on Mississippi’s racism and to register black voters. Baker, and many of her contemporaries, believed that voting was one key to freedom.
With Ella Baker’s guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country.
Her influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: “Fundi,” a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight for human and civil rights until her death on her 83rd birthday.
http://zinnedproject.org/materials/baker-ella/
http://www.ellabakerschool.net/…/about-ell…/ella-bakers-life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Baker
Can't believe you haven't heard of her everyday of your life, can ya?
* * * * *
ELLA BAKER BIRTH'S THE SNCC
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they had been denied service.
Having difficulties with competitive, authoritarian leadership (sexist too, according to Septima Clarke) at the SCLC Baker left organization after these Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist these new student activists as she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement.
Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born.
Having run a voter registration campaign called the "Crusade for Citizenship" earlier in her civil rights career, she incorporated the voter registration of rural blacks as one of SNCC's goals. Students from SNCC went out into black communities that had never really been tapped into before by more middle class groups like N.A.A.C.P. and the SCLC. Many black people in these areas had to be told they had the right to vote in the first place. And one of those black people that SNCC made aware of their own voting rights was Fannie Lou Hamer.
Hamer would go on to speak at a televised democratic convention. And millions of people around the world would hear her tell the story of white efforts to keep black people from the polls.
Adopting the Gandhian theory of nonviolent direct action, SNCC members joined with activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to organize in the 1961 Freedom Rides.
In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national attention on Mississippi’s racism and to register black voters. Baker, and many of her contemporaries, believed that voting was one key to freedom.
With Ella Baker’s guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country.
Her influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: “Fundi,” a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight for human and civil rights until her death on her 83rd birthday.
http://zinnedproject.org/materials/baker-ella/
http://www.ellabakerschool.net/…/about-ell…/ella-bakers-life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Baker
Can't believe you haven't heard of her everyday of your life, can ya?
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