Ella Baker: the Humble Intellectual, the Master Teacher, the Community Organizer

Ella Jo Baker, the Humble Intellectual, the Master Teacher, the Community Organizer.

Ella Baker, though a bi-cultural individual, remained anchored in the poor, oppressed black community she grew up in. By orthodox standards, she was a unorthodox teacher, usually the smartest/wisest person in the room who

*usually listened more than she lectured
*asked questions more than she gave answers
*genuinely believed that even illiterate poor had valuable insights and wisdom
*understood that emotional conflicts could reveal depth or lack of understanding
*that strong emotions could reveal a person's true passion

Baker viewed traditional teacher training with suspicion because she noted that after the training was completed "anyone with spirit [creativity and curiosity] would be curbed." So she appeared to many to be a radical rebel which in many good ways, she was. She was a teacher-activist who was always learning much from her pupils. Baker was always larger than any single ideology.

Joyce Ladner said of Baker: "She was a quiet presence in a way. What she did was to distill, sum up and take [discussions] to the next level."

Barbara Ransby asserted: "In Baker's view, people had many of the answers within themselves; teachers and leaders simply had to facilitate the process of tapping and framing that knowledge, of drawing it out."

For Baker, the best knowledge came from collective wisdom, not ego-driven knowledge. Leaders come and go so the people must be or become their own leaders, sooner or later. She had both a moral and intellectual presence which came from her Baptist mother, but she never pushed this on her followers.

She was suspicious of southern preachers who too often constituted a "verbal society" with minimal action. John Perkins agreed; for the most part he preferred to work with Christian businessmen rather than preachers in community development. In highly churched Mississippi, neither the white church nor the black church did much to challenge and stop oppression.

Though a powerful speaker herself, in general she was suspicious of eloquent oratory, too much of which was hot air with little action. Baker seldom cited an author nor recommended books to read. And she never wrote a book.

In summary, Ransby writes: "Baker's political philosophy emphasized the importance of tapping oppressed communities for their knowledge, strength, and leadership in constructing models for social change. She took seriously and tried to understand the ways in which poor black people saw and analyzed the world. And her own base of knowledge came primarily from these same communities [even though she had a college degree]. . . . she was an 'organic intellectual'. Part of her work as a writer, orator, and analyst was not to invent or impose ideas on the masses but rather to help them, as she put it, 'see their own ideas'."

Most American education is too white, middle and upper class, therefore of limited value to the oppressed poor; in fact, it may be part of their oppression. So we need "to think in radical terms."

Americans need to rethink the Scriptures in radical terms. For example,



David Chappell, in his 2014 book Waking From the Dream, discusses the 20 years following Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968. This time period is normally treated by historians as a time of cessation, decline, failure in terms of civil rights. But Chappell argues that the civil rights struggle continued with some significant successes led by Corretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson and many other of King's colleagues. For example, "exactly one week after Martin Luther King's murder, President Lyndon Johnson signed the third great civil rights act of the twentieth century. . . . the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the Fair Housing Act." But strangely, this significant legislation "has been almost completely forgotten."

Chappell argues that the civil rights movement "both grew and splintered," but the struggle continued.

In 1974, Corretta King and labor unions began a vigorous push for full employment legislation. Had the Humphrey-Hawkins bill been passed as originally conceived, it would have been "more radical than any that had passed in the 1960s. . . . required a complete transformation of economic policy, spreading the direct benefits of federal intervention to working and poor people." Though watered down, it was signed into law in 1978.

Jesse Jackson's two unsuccessful runs for president in the 1980s did keep some of the civil rights goals in the public conversation.

But during this same 20 year time period, the forces of oppression were hard at work, according to Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow. These new systems of oppression such as mass incarceration of young black and Latino males exploded under President Reagan aggressive leadership and continued under Presidents Bush, Clinton and Bush. Some of the hard won civil rights victories were lost or watered down.

While we must applaud the heroic efforts of the abolitionists and Lincoln to abolish slavery and the equally heroic efforts of King and Baker to abolish much of Jim Crow segregation, by and large, the American church catastrophically failed to become deeply engaged in abolishing American systems of oppression. To expand and maintain justice, the church all across American needed to become active; it failed to do so. Remarkable prophetic figures can accomplish a lot, but the forces of oppression quickly reorganize and redesign new systems of oppression. The American church should quickly identify and oppose such systems of oppression, but it does so slowly, if at all. So mass incarceration is going strong in 2014 with little opposition from the church.

The American church does not have a carefully constructed biblical theology of oppression and justice. Therefore, throughout all of American history its record is more often either toleration of or participation in systems of oppression rather than the biblically informed and aggressive pursuit of justice. Our seminaries have failed to prepare our pastors in this area.

The high wall of ethnocentrism/oppression/poverty was erected by the Puritans and the founding fathers. From time to time, efforts by abolitionists and civil rights leaders have knocked holes in the wall, but the wall still stands and some of the holes have been filled in.
Or to use another analogy that King himself used: "I saw my dream turn into a nightmare." See Martin and Malcolm in America: A Dream or a Nightmare. For the most part, the very long American nightmare that King referred to in December 1967 continues down to today, 2014. Even in 2014, the American church stills preaches and practices a gutted gospel, gutted of oppression and justice; therefore it is powerless to tear down that Wall, to end the long social nightmare.

What does a half gospel, a gutted gospel look like? On December 24, I attended a Christmas eve service. Isaiah 9:6 was highlighted; Isaiah 9:7, an equally important part of the Messianic prophecy, was ignored. A church that preaches Ephesians. 2:8-9 but ignores 2:10 guts the gospel. A church that preaches John 3:16 but ignores Luke 4:18-19 guts the gospel. A church that preaches Jesus Christ but ignores the kingdom of God guts the gospel (Acts 8:12). A church that preaches the cross but ignores the kingdom guts the gospel. A church that practices spirituality without justice guts the gospel. A church that practices faith without works guts the gospel.

Does your favorite theologian identify with the poor and oppressed or come from the ranks of the oppressed poor? Very few white theologians do so, so they are immediately suspect in my eyes. For good reason, they have left biblical oppression out of their theology. If oppression were central, they would have to repent or appear to be hypocrites or they are social deists---uninvolved. Better read Tom Skinner or Barbara Skinner or John Perkins or Martin Luther King.

Even if race, racism, prejudice and discrimination magically disappeared overnight, ethnocentrism (cultural superiority), economic oppression, and flawed religion (neglect of justice, no releasing of the oppressed), would keep all non-Anglo ethnic groups in their inferior place. See Race and Manifest Destiny. Will the church ever move beyond partial answers to deep solutions?