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Ella Baker Legacy Energizes Movement for Black Lives

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Ella Baker was 61 years old when her comrade, historian Howard Zinn, wrote in “SNCC: The New Abolitionists,” “Ella Baker is more responsible than any other single individual for the birth of the new abolitionists as an organized group, and who remains the most tireless, most modest, and wisest activist I know in the struggle for human rights.”

In a recent talk, Cornel West said: “There is no civil rights movement without the witness and example of Ella Baker.”

Ella Baker, however, has yet to receive full, mainstream public recognition for her contribution to American democracy, especially the co-founding and guidance of the most effective, innovative civil rights organization of the 20th century, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee—SNCC.

While it is true that the media demonizes Malcolm X and sanitizes Dr. King, Ella Baker, a Black woman, is simply ignored.

In her new book, “FROM #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes: “Black women have been central to every significant campaign for Black rights and freedom. Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash…were critical to the development of the civil rights movement, but that movement is still primarily known by its male leaders.”

Ella Baker was three decades older (She was called a “middle-aged hell-raiser”), but young activists trusted her because she showed more confidence in the audacity and inventiveness of youth than in the expertise of established civil rights organizations. The students affectionately called her “Miss Baker” (though she was married).

Her nickname was “Fundi,” a Swahili term for a person who hands down skills and wisdom from one community to another. Baker defied stereotypes. She was a militant revolutionary who wore elegant hats and dressed as if she were attending church.

The founding of SNCC at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1960 changed the tone and direction of the civil rights movement. The conference, which drew hundreds of students from throughout the South, was tense.

Male leaders in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference wanted to oversee the fledgling organization, to put SNCC under their control. Baker was the only woman to speak at the Plenary Session. She warned students against bureaucracy and co-optation.

She insisted on the autonomy of the students, who had already demonstrated their brilliance and savvy tactics in the early sit-ins. “I knew that young people were the hope of any movement. It was just a normal thing to me,” Baker said years later.

Each generation offers a new lens through which to view the contours of the future.

Baker’s democratic, grassroots practice permeated SNCC. By shifting the focus from appeals to the elite to organizing the disenfranchised and the poor, SNCC changed the center of gravity in the movement. Black communities were not helpless.

They were ready to fight. Mississippi historian John Dittmer wrote: “Not since Reconstruction had anyone seriously proposed that illiterate sharecroppers had the same right to the franchise as did teachers, lawyers, and doctors.”

Mentored by Baker, SNCC turned away from charismatic, top-down leaders to group-centered leadership. And it put direct, mass action at the center of strategy. SNCC students organized new sit-ins at segregated facilities, carried out the historic freedom rides in the face of violence, and registered black voters in defiance of the Ku Klux Klan in rural Mississippi.

SNCC’s assault on Jim Crow in the 60s did more to abolish the legal apparatus of white supremacy than years of well-financed legalistic and professionally run campaigns.

SNCC’s influence extended far beyond black communities in the South. Tom Hayden participated in SNCC meetings and actions, and he saw “participatory democracy” in action before he wrote the SDS Port Huron Statement. In the SDS Bulletin he asked: “Can the methods of SNCC be applied to the North?”

Paul Rockwell is a  Writer-activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.His essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Baltimore Sun, Utne Reader, The Nation, and a host of alternative weeklies.

Paul Rockwell   

Paul Rockwell   

Activism

New Oakland Moving Forward

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

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iStock.
iStock.

By Post Staff

Since the African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the City of Oakland’s share of the Alameda County Coliseum Complex, we have been documenting the positive outcomes that are starting to occur here in Oakland.

Some of the articles in the past have touched on actor Blair Underwood’s mission to breathe new energy into the social fabric of Oakland. He has joined the past efforts of Steph and Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Green Day, Too Short, and the Oakland Ballers.

This week, several socially enterprising members of this group visited Oakland to explore ways to collaborate with local stakeholders at Youth Empowerment Partnership, the Port of Oakland, Private Industry Council, Oakland, Mayor-Elect Barbara Lee, the Oakland Ballers ownership group, and the oversight thought leaders in the Alameda County Probation Department.

These visits represent a healthy exchange of ideas and plans to resuscitate Oakland’s image. All parties felt that the potential to impact Oakland is right in front of us. Most recently, on the back side of these visits, the Oakland Ballers and Blair Underwood committed to a 10-year lease agreement to support community programs and a community build-out.

So, upward and onward with the movement of New Oakland.

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Arts and Culture

BOOK REVIEW: Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy

When Bridgett M. Davis was in college, her sister Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

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Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.
Love Rita Book Cover. Courtesy of Harper.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Bridgett M. Davis, c.2025, Harper, $29.99, 367 Pages

Take care.

Do it because you want to stay well, upright, and away from illness. Eat right, swallow your vitamins and hydrate, keep good habits and hygiene, and cross your fingers. Take care as much as you can because, as in the new book, “Love, Rita” by Bridgett M. Davis, your well-being is sometimes out of your hands.

It was a family story told often: when Davis was born, her sister, Rita, then four years old, stormed up to her crying newborn sibling and said, ‘Shut your … mouth!’

Rita, says Davis, didn’t want a little sister then. She already had two big sisters and a neighbor who was somewhat of a “sister,” and this baby was an irritation. As Davis grew, the feeling was mutual, although she always knew that Rita loved her.

Over the years, the sisters tried many times not to fight — on their own and at the urging of their mother — and though division was ever present, it eased when Rita went to college. Davis was still in high school then, and she admired her big sister.

She eagerly devoured frequent letters sent to her in the mail, signed, “Love, Rita.”

When Davis was in college herself, Rita was diagnosed with lupus, a disease of the immune system that often left her constantly tired and sore. Davis was a bit unfazed, but sympathetic to Rita’s suffering and also annoyed that the disease sometimes came between them. By that time, they needed one another more than ever.

First, they lost their father. Drugs then invaded the family and addiction stole two siblings. A sister and a young nephew were murdered in a domestic violence incident. Their mother was devastated; Rita’s lupus was an “added weight of her sorrow.”

After their mother died of colon cancer, Rita’s lupus took a turn for the worse.

“Did she even stand a chance?” Davis wrote in her journal.

“It just didn’t seem possible that she, someone so full of life, could die.”

Let’s start here: once you get past the prologue in “Love, Rita,” you may lose interest. Maybe.

Most of the stories that author Bridgett M. Davis shares are mildly interesting, nothing rare, mostly commonplace tales of growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a sibling. There are a lot of these kinds of stories, and they tend to generally melt together. After about fifty pages of them, you might start to think about putting the book aside.

But don’t. Not quite yet.

In between those everyday tales, Davis occasionally writes about being an ailing Black woman in America, the incorrect assumptions made by doctors, the history of medical treatment for Black people (women in particular), attitudes, and mythologies. Those passages are now and then, interspersed, but worth scanning for.

This book is perhaps best for anyone with the patience for a slow-paced memoir, or anyone who loves a Black woman who’s ill or might be ill someday. If that’s you and you can read between the lines, then “Love, Rita” is a book to take in carefully.

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Activism

Faces Around the Bay: Author Karen Lewis Took the ‘Detour to Straight Street’

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear  the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

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Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.
Karen Lewis. Courtesy photo.

By Barbara Fluhrer

I met Karen Lewis on a park bench in Berkeley. She wrote her story on the spot.

“My life has been a roller-coaster with an unlimited ride wristband! I was raised in Berkeley during the time of Ron Dellums, the Black Panthers, and People’s Park. I was a Hippie kid, my Auntie cut off all our hair so we could wear  the natural styles like her and Angela Davis.

I got married young, then ended up getting divorced, raising two boys into men. After my divorce, I had a stroke that left me blind and paralyzed. I was homeless, lost in a fog with blurred vision.

Jesus healed me! I now have two beautiful grandkids. At 61, this age and this stage, I am finally free indeed. Our Lord Jesus Christ saved my soul. I now know how to be still. I lay at his feet. I surrender and just rest. My life and every step on my path have already been ordered. So, I have learned in this life…it’s nice to be nice. No stressing,  just blessings. Pray for the best and deal with the rest.

Nobody is perfect, so forgive quickly and love easily!”

Lewis’ book “Detour to Straight Street” is available on Amazon.

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