Chapter 9 The Empowerment Of An Indigenous Southern Black Leadership 1961
Discussion Questions: Do you think SNCC activists tried to assert too much control over the tenant farmer’s struggle inFayette County? In what ways can outside activists avoid exercising too much authority overpeople in local struggles and what positive support roles can they fulfill instead?
How did Baker and SNCC’s organizational approach, tactics, and overall strategy differ fromthose of King and the SCLC? Specifically, how did SNCC and SCLC diverge in regards toworking within the legal system and other established institutions?
In what ways did Ella Baker exert informal leadership within SNCC? What are some of thepotential problems of informal leadership and how can we hold people in positions ofaccountable in our own movements and organizations?
How did the patriarchy of broader society influence the organizational culture of SNCC? In yourown experience, how does gender continue to undermine work in social movements andorganizations?
Is This America: Sharecroppers Challenged Mississippi Apartheid Lbj And The Nation
Article. By Julian Hipkins III and Deborah Menkart. If We Knew Our History Series.At the 1964 Democratic National convention, former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party made a dramatic challenge to the all-white delegation. Their actions rocked the political landscape.
Ella Baker And The Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision: Discussion Guide
While this book is primarily a biography of black rights activist Ella Baker, it contains a wealth ofinformation on the organizations she was involved in. Baker was instrumental in shaping the”black freedom movement” for several decades, beginning in the 30s. She played an invaluablerole in strengthening and defining the NAACP, King’s Southern Christian LeadershipConference, as well as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee . She cut herteeth as a young organizer in Harlem, but as the civil rights movement gained momentum sherelocated to the South and joined the struggle for desegregation. These two selected chaptersdocument Baker’s role in the formation and rise of SNCC between 1960-1964.
Chapter 8, “Mentoring a New Generation of Activists: The Birth of the Student Non-ViolentCoordinating Committee, 1960-1961” covers the emergence of SNCC out of the sit-inmovement and Baker’s role in molding the organization. It also outlines some of the keyorganizational and strategic question that SNCC founders struggled with.
Discussion Questions:
Why was it important for youth and students engaged in civil rights work to operate somewhatindependently of the NAACP and SCLC? What does SNCC’s experience teach us about howstudent activists should organize themselves and relate to other struggles in the current period?
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Ella Baker And The Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision
Time Periods:Themes:Order online
One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the Civil Rights Movement, Ella Baker was an activist whose remarkable career spanned fifty years and touched thousands of lives.
A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the Black freedom struggle. She was a national officer and key figure in the NAACP, one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a prime mover in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Baker made a place for herself in predominantly male political circles that included W. E. B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr., all the while maintaining relationships with a vibrant group of women, students, and activists both Black and white.