2019.1.20
Video: Movement Leader Bayard Rustin
https://youtu.be/BxhKgnyWcuw
Reflection by guest Rev. Jametta Alston
Video: Movement Leader Ella Baker https://youtu.be/OjCibLwkOaw
Reflection by Rev. Laura Bogle
“Ella Baker: Seeing Through the Eyes of Love”
I chose this video clip to show today
because it overlays Ella Baker’s words from 1974 with images about how her
legacy continues to inform community work today.
In my view she is one of
the most important leaders of the civil rights movement in this country—and,
like Bayard Rustin, one that most people have never heard about.
Who here learned about
Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker in school?
Ella Baker was born in
Norfolk, VA, in 1903, and she grew up on land that her grandparents had worked
as enslaved people.
After graduating from
Shaw University in NC, Ella was in New York City. She became involved in the Young Negro
Cooperative league and then joined the staff of the NAACP.
As the Civil Rights
movement began organizing in earnest in the mid-1950’s, Ella along with Bayard
Rustin and the Jewish leader Stanley Levinson organized a group in New York
called “In Friendship.” Through this
organization they raised money to support the Montgomery bus boycott and the
southern civil rights movement as a whole.
They did the incredibly
important work of moving resources from those who had it, especially those in
the north, to make sure that the people who were doing the organizing and the
protesting and risking a lot, had the money they needed to meet basic needs.
Baker eventually joined
the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. But perhaps her most important role was as
advisor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was founded in
1960.
Ella Baker believed in
and supported the leadership of young people.
In fact she believed strongly in what she called “group-centered
leaders” rather than the “leader-centered” style.
She is quoted as saying
in 1968, after Dr. King was assassinated, “You see, I think that, to be very
honest, the movement made Martin rather than Martin making the movement. This
is not a discredit to him. This is, to me, as it should be” (Baker, 19 June
1968).
Ella Baker did the slow, methodical,
behind-the-scenes work of inspiring and guiding young people – black and white—into
movement action and leadership.
Cornel West: “She’s like a jazz musician – it’s call and
response. She’s not pontificating from
above, she’s having conversation on the horizontal level. And that’s genuine leadership, but it’s a different
kind of leadership than Martin being charismatic and out there.”
She was deeply committed
to the spark of knowledge and agency and leadership present in all people, and bringing that
forth.
Barbara Ransby, who wrote
a biography of Baker, says that “she would go into small towns and say, ‘Whom
are you reaching out to?’ And she’d tell them that if you’re not reaching out
to the town drunk you’re not really working for the rights of black people. The
folk who were getting rounded up and thrown in jail had to be included.””
(from: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/where-is-black-lives-matter-headed
)
This is seeing everyone through the eyes of love,
seeing the possibility present in everyone, even those who are broken and need
some healing and redemption.
And she challenged those
in positions of power and privilege – white folks—to also see themselves as
leaders in the struggle for human rights.
Three weeks after Dr. King was assassinated, Ella Baker was a keynote
speaker at a fundraising dinner in New York City for the Southern Conference
Education Fund. And I have to believe
that many, if not most of the folks in the room were wealthy liberal white
folks, wanting to support the work of the civil rights movement. She said in that speech:
“One of the things about
the question of racism…that frequently has come up with me is, “Well, we are
not guilty, personally.”
Of course you’re
not. I don’t know that there’s anybody
in this room that’s carried on a campaign of racism, per se. But I doubt that there’s anybody in this room
who has not, at some point, been guilty of supporting a racist culture.
And we must search
ourselves to find out how we have been guilty.
Not for the sake of just wallowing in our guilt. But for the sake of facing the fact that the
future of our culture—or our country—depends not so much on what black people
do as it does depend on what white people do.
Now, this is a hard
lesson for some of us. That the choice
as to whether or not we will rid the country of racism, is a choice that white
America has to make.”
We still have to make
that choice every day.
It is so easy for us to
think the Dr. King was the civil
rights movement. But frankly, ya’ll,
that lets us off the hook. And what does it say about what is possible today? If we are waiting for another Dr. King to
show us the way, then we are in a place of hopelessness and despair.
What do we know about how
the legacy of Ella Baker, and Bayard Rustin, and yes King and so many others
lives on today?
For instance, there are
direct connections between the leadership legacy of Ella Baker and the way that
organizations like Black Lives Matter and the National Domestic Workers
Alliance has organized. It is a legacy
of women’s leadership and queer leadership—gifts that very often get overlooked
in the mainstream celebration of MLK Day.
Black Lives Matter has
chapters all over this country. And while there are three main identified
founders—Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullors, and Opal Tometi-- there are many, many
leaders. And, I want to add: those three
identified founders are all women, two of them are queer, one of them is a
black immigrant.
Journalist Jelani Cobb
writes, “Black Lives Matter emerged as a modern extension of Ella Baker’s
thinking—a preference for ten thousand candles rather than a single spotlight.
In a way, [Black Lives Matter founders] created the context and the movement
created itself.” (New Yorker article)
The National Domestic
Workers Alliance centers the experiences of domestic workers like nannies, home
care aides, and housekeepers—overwhelmingly women of color. These unseen workers in our economy are
usually not covered by any kind of labor protections. Abuse and exploitation can happen so
easily. The National Domestic Workers
Alliance seeks to build alliances with the people who must employ them,
especially disabled folks, elders, and working parents, to lift the standards
for working conditions AND the access to this kind of care for everyone who
needs it.
Like Ella Baker and the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee:
Very focused on local needs and leadership. The people most impacted leading the
way. A sense of a “leader-full” movement
– not just one well-known leader.
A focus on personal relationship – really building
for the long haul, turning to neighbors and friends and inviting them into the
movement, and valuing the range of gifts that people bring.
As contemporary social
change facilitator adrienne maree brown says, “If the goal was to increase the
love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could
actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be
seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of
war, but through eyes of love.”
Here in Blount County,
Blount County United was formed after the shooting of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, MO. Here is a place open to
all in our community to engage and participate to support racial justice and
equity, right here. It is an
organization doing the dedicated, slow infrastructure and relationship
building. Their next monthly meeting is
Saturday, 1pm at St. Paul AMEZion. All
are welcome to attend. And on Thursday
Jan. 31st the Blount County United Education committee will hold an
important public workshop: “The Impact
of Structural Racism on Personal and Community Well-being.” This is part of a
series of community programs that will use a racial justice lens to look at how
public policy affects personal and community well-being. Attendees will
participate in a simulation to help them better understand the impact federal
policies have had in creating and sustaining economic inequality. Participation
is encouraged by the well-informed as well as those new to this topic.
Our hope is that this experience will inspire individual and community-based actions
that produce equitable access, opportunities, treatment, and outcomes for all.
Like Bayard Rustin and
Ella Baker, Let us see through the eyes of love, the possibilities present in
every community, in every person, in every time. Seeing through the eyes of love does not mean
a weak kind of inaction but this deep love and recognition of interconnection
leads to powerful and risky action for social change,
including civil disobedience when it is strategic.
Will we take up the
charge of our Unitarian Universalist faith that tells us none of us are free
until all of us are free?
Will you, will we, take
up Ella’s charge: The willingness to
stand by and do what has to be done, when it has to be done.
Only when we do this, can
we truthfully say we are living in hope.
May we make it so. Amen.
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