Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement

Baker believed in a politics of the ordinary person. She believed in centering the stories and lives of the average citizen, the poor, the working class. Ransby repeatedly returns to Baker’s formation of a political philosophy that uplifted the poor and working-class blacks and gave them a substantial voice in the movement. By connecting with local leaders, empowering rural blacks to speak for themselves, Baker helped turn the Black Freedom Movement into a movement of all peoples, strengthening its base across the South.

In Harlem, Baker met working-class and poor black people for what was likely the first time in her fairly middle-class life. Such encounters had an immense impact on Baker, as she learned about their struggles and experienced them herself as the Great Depression hit the country. She observed how economic situations were placing black people in much the same position as slaves—this was the inspiration for her article, “The Bronx Slave Market.”

As Ransby puts it:

“The economic rigors of the depression had intensified all forms of oppression, pushing many black women from the lower rungs of the wage labor force back to day work and even into occasional prostitution. When Baker and Cooke wrote their article, the modern concept of feminism was still a foreign notion to most Americans, black and white.