S2.E.3.1: Ella Baker - Part 1

08/18/22 • 86 min

Listen, Organize, Act! Organizing & Democratic Politics

This episode discusses the work of Ella Baker and the different traditions and influences that shaped her organizing and her understanding of democracy. Baker didn’t write much and what she did write is not widely available. Instead, her approach is taught through accounts of it by historians of the civil rights movement and her biographers. So it is her life and practice that I focus on in this two part episode. In part 1 of the episode I discuss Baker's biography, her vision of democracy, and her legacy with my colleague, Wesley Hogan. Wesley is Research Professor at the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. She has researched and written extensively on the civil rights movement, particularly the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC) which Baker helped organize and within which Baker was a key figure. And in her most recent book, Wesley examines contemporary movements influenced by Baker such as the Movement for Black Lives and the International Indigenous Youth Council, which is involved in the struggle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline and protect sovereign control of Indigenous lands.
Guest
Wesley Hogan is Research Professor at the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. She writes and teaches the history of youth social movements, human rights, documentary studies, and oral history. Her book books include, On the Freedom Side, which draws a portrait of young people organizing in the spirit of Ella Baker since 1960; Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America (2009) and a volume co-edited with Paul Ortiz entitled, People Power: History, Organizing, and Larry Goodwyn’s Democratic Vision in the Twenty-First Century. Between 2003-2013, she taught at Virginia State University, where she worked with the Algebra Project and the Young People’s Project. From 2013-2021, she served as Director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. She co-facilitates a partnership between the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke,The SNCC Digital Gateway, the purpose of which is to bring the grassroots stories of the civil rights movement to a much wider public through a web portal, K12 initiative, and set of critical oral histories.
Resources for Going Deeper
Charles Payne, “Slow and Respectful Work” & “Mrs Hamer is No Longer Relevant,” I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), Ch.’s 8 & 13.
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
J. Todd Moye, Ella Baker: Community Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).
Mie Inouye, “Starting with People Where They Are: Ella Baker’s Theory of Political Organizing,” American Political Science Review 116:2 (2022), 533–546.
Interview with Ella Baker (1968)

For more information & relevant updates follow me on Twitter: @WestLondonMan
For readings to download relevant to or discussed in an episode visit: https://ormondcenter.com/listen-organize-act-podcast

For more information & relevant updates follow me on Twitter: @WestLondonMan
For readings to download relevant to or discussed in an episode visit: https://ormondcenter.com/listen-organize-act-podcast

Previous Episode

S2.E2.2: Saul Alinsky - Part 2

This two-part episode discusses the work of Saul Alinsky, the “dean of community organizing” and the different traditions and influences that shaped his democratic vision. The key texts discussed are his two books: “Reveille for Radicals” published in 1946, and his more well known latter book, “Rules for Radicals,” written in 1971. In this second part of the episode I to talk to Mike Miller. Mike started out in politics as part of the early stirrings of the student movement at UC Berkeley. From there he got involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), doing work in Mississippi but mostly organizing support for SNCC on the West Coast. That led him to working with Cesar Chavez as part of the Farmworker Movement. Coming off of all of that he ends up as a community organizer based in San Francisco, his home town, but organizing in different locations around the US for many decades until his retirement. His move from SNCC to organizing in the Bay Area was catalyzed by meeting Saul Alinsky who recruited him to work for the Industrial Areas Foundation for a while. I talk to Mike about his relationship with Alinsky and what he thinks was Alinsky’s understanding of democracy. Towards the end, Mike reflects on the different pathways organizing took after Alinsky died. Along the way, he draws some contrasts between the different kinds of organizing he has been involved in over the years.
Guest:
Mike Miller was a leader in the pre-1960s birth of the student movement at UC Berkeley, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary, and director of a community organizing project initiated by Saul Alinsky. He has been a lead organizer, consultant, mentor and workshop leader in the field of community organizing over many decades. He has taught community organizing, social welfare, and urban politics at UC Berkeley, Stanford, Notre Dame, Lone Mountain, San Francisco State, University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, and Hayward State. He has also written extensively on the subject and related matters in numerous magazines and journal articles. His books include “A Community Organizer's Tale: People and Power in San Francisco—the 1964 to 1972 story of the Mission Coalition Organization (MCO),” and most recently, a co-edited volume entitled “People Power: The Community Organizing Tradition of Saul Alinsky.” He currently directs the ORGANIZE Training Center: www.organizetrainingcenter.org

For more information & relevant updates follow me on Twitter: @WestLondonMan
For readings to download relevant to or discussed in an episode visit: https://ormondcenter.com/listen-organize-act-podcast

Next Episode

Ep3.2: Ella Baker - Part 2

In this second part of the episode on Ella Baker, I talk to Gerald Taylor. We discuss the influence Baker’s approach and vision had on him as an organizer, how he sees her understanding of organizing play out on the ground, and his own involvement in myriad grassroots democratic initiatives. Along the way, he recounts a compelling set of stories and reflections on what it means to do organizing in the spirit of Ella Baker.
Guest
Gerald Taylor was a national senior organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) for nearly 35 years, and for much of this time he was the IAF’s Southeast Regional Director. In 2015, he co-founded Advance Carolina, the first state-wide Black led 501c (4) in North Carolina focused on building Black political power. His organizing career began as a teenager through involvement in the civil rights movement, with him eventually being elected as New York State President of the NAACP Youth and College Division at 17 years old. He then organized with the National Democratic Party of Alabama, an interracial third political party, in their historic election victories of 1970. He went to be involved in numerous organizing initiatives in the US, most notably in New York City, Baltimore, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, and Jackson, Mississippi. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, he spent four years organizing African American communities along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to receive disaster relieve leading to the formation of a coalition that negotiated nearly one billion dollars in disaster relieve funding for these communities. He has trained thousands of leaders, including clergy, over the past forty years in community organizing and congregational development. He has also lectured at colleges and universities, including Shaw Divinity School, Hood Divinity School, North Carolina Central Law School, Duke Divinity School, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Garrett Evangelical Methodist Seminary, and UNC Chapel-Hill on theories of social change, community organizing, and leadership. He has also worked internationally with organizations such as Bread for the World, the Sidney Alliance in Australia, and been a consultant to democratization initiatives in Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
Resources for Going Deeper
See the show notes for the previous episode

For more information & relevant updates follow me on Twitter: @WestLondonMan
For readings to download relevant to or discussed in an episode visit: https://ormondcenter.com/listen-organize-act-podcast