Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement

“Ella Baker’s family was characterized by a certain flexibility in gender dynamics, male and female roles, and masculine and feminine attributes. Although domestic responsibility and childcare fell largely on her mother and wage-earning fell primarily on her father, her parents did not exhibit or inculcate the behaviors and attitudes conventionally associated with males and females. This fluidity may have contributed to Ella Baker’s own construction of a gender identity that was less than conventional.” 

Baker’s parents modeled an egalitarianism that shaped how she saw herself and her relationship to her gender. Her mother embodied a womanhood that was not constrained to the home but spread outward into her community, and her father embodied a quiet contentment that showed Baker that men did not have to behave in specific ways either.

“Baker recalled: ‘My man-woman relationships were on the basis of just being a human being, not a sex object. As far as my sense of security, it had been established. [...] I had been able to compete on levels such as scholarship. [...] And I could stand my own in debate. And things of that nature. I wasn’t delicate.’” 

Baker’s own recollection of her relationships with men is that she would take nothing less than respect as a human being. This quote is important for understanding how Baker saw herself. She could always run with the smart and highly educated because she matched them in understanding and scholarship, which forced them to take her seriously as a woman and a human.

“They became key gathering places for many young Harlem artists, intellectuals, and activists. On his arrival in New York in 1921, the poet Langston Hughes recounted: ‘I came up out of the subway at 135th and Lenox into the beginnings of the Negro Renaissance. I headed for the Harlem YMCA down the block, where so many new, young dark [...] arrivals in Harlem have spent their early days. The next place I headed to that afternoon was the Harlem Branch Library just up the street.’ These two institutions were the dual pillars of Harlem’s intellectual and political life for over two decades.” 

Harlem’s public institutions became centers of intellectual discourse during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and ’30s. The YMCA/YWCA and the 135th St. Library were central to ongoing discussions about everything from socialism to civil rights struggles.