20th Century African American Women

"I’ve put together a fourteen-point plan, which is available on our website runcynthiarun.org. And in those fourteen points is included a elimination of adjustable rate mortgages, predatory lending, and any of the discriminatory practices that helped to fuel the crisis that we’re experiencing. In addition to that, I also call for the elimination of derivatives trading, which is one of the major problems."

"I have to tell you that I supported Nancy Pelosi for most of my political tenure in the United States Congress, and it was quite a disappointment for her to take impeachment off the table."

"I also call for the nationalization of the Federal Reserve and the establishment of a banking system, a nationalized banking system, that really responds to the needs of people and our country. Our country needs investment in infrastructure, in manufacturing and in greening our economy, and that could be accomplished through such a banking system that belongs to the American people."

"our values are, first and foremost, peace. The values that we have to express are ending the disparities, the glaring disparities based on race and class that exist in our country."

"why is it that we are not talking about poverty in this country? Why is it that we’re not talking about cutting the money that we give to the Pentagon? The Pentagon has already admitted that it lost 2.3 trillion of our dollars. Where is the accountability? And why is it that the values that are so easily expressed in public policy are the ones that say we have to cut social programs, we have to ask people who are losing their life’s investment in their homes in this subprime mortgage crisis, that they’re the ones who have to tighten their belts?"

"I would also just like to say I agree that US corporations should not receive tax subsidies for moving jobs overseas, and that’s a piece of legislation that I actually introduced when I was in the Congress."

"during the time of Martin Luther King Jr. transformation from a civil rights figure, trying to secure the rights of all people in this country, and then moving that into the economic realm to challenge the budget and policy priorities of the United States Congress in the Poor People’s Campaign, he was murdered, and that –— those efforts were cut short with the active participation of people in the media who literally hounded him for the last five years of his life. Is that what we expect to happen to people who voice their dissent in our country?"

"I reject the continuation of the occupation of Iraq and, of course, reject any surge into Afghanistan. There was silence over the most recent US raid over Syria, the incursions into Pakistan, the virtual blaming of Russia for a provocation that actually was initiated by Georgia, the push to include NATO membership for countries that are right up to the border of Russia and China. Then, of course, I would never have been for the bailout, put out my own fourteen points with respect to the bailout, would never have supported FISA, the illegal spying, the unwarranted spying on US citizens, and at the same time granting of immunity to telecoms that were complicit in that. There are many areas of disagreement with the Obama administration."

"I was with people who are trying to form a support committee to support the aspirations and the votes of people in Latin America who have really produced change by the power of the ballot, and looking at supporting Evo Morales in Bolivia and Hugo Chavez, of course, in Venezuela. But, of course, we’ve also got Daniel Ortega now in Nicaragua. So we’ve had a succession of successes, really, demonstrating that it is possible to vote one’s fears and to vote one’s dreams and hopes and aspirations and win."

"There is no more special interest that has any more influence than the pro Israel lobby. So then when I did outreach for example to the Muslim community in the United States I bopped into the pro Israeli lobby which of course does not want to have to contend with a politicized Muslim community which is as large as and is as wealthy as the pro Israeli lobby is in the United States. So, yes I first handedly and also frontally was assaulted by the presence of the pro Israeli lobby. Well, politically assaulted to such an extent that my father had to ask the question publically, 'what does stoned mountain Georgia have to do with Israel? What I was doing was servicing the needs of my constituents and I was not allowed to do that because I did not toe the line on US policy for Israel. .. every candidate for Congress at that time had a pledge. They were given a pledge to sign and I was new on the scene and the pledge had Jerusalem as the capital city, the military superiority of Israel .. If you do not sign the pledge, you do not get money .. You make a commitment that you would vote to support the military superiority of Israel that the economic assistant that Israel wants that you would vote to provide that."

"I’ve learned that there is a community of people who have found that life is possible outside of the two-party paradigm. They have searched for resolution of issues that are of grave concern to them, and they have not found it within the two-party-system. But that has sometimes meant that they would withdraw from electoral — the electoral process altogether. And so, we have a whole huge swath of the potential electorate who don’t even vote at all."

"starting in 1968, many of them have said that the treatment of the Democratic Party of people, their children, basically, who were outside of the Democratic National Convention and who wanted only to express their opposition to the Vietnam War, that was a tipping point for them. Others have experienced — have said that 9/11 truth is a tipping point for them. The failure of the Democratic Party to support impeachment, which is really the ultimate form of accountability in our system, is a tipping point for them."

"the issues that I’ve been talking about as I’ve gone around this country have been the tremendous impact that the Bush tax cuts have had on income inequality in our country. The sad fact of the matter is that we are experiencing the kind of income inequality not experienced since the Great Depression."

"Gus Savage was a black member of Congress who was targeted by the pro-Israel lobby. And he had the foresight as an incumbent in the House of Representatives to put his experience on the Congressional Record."

"The laudable move away from lavishing attention solely on charismatic leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. to giving credit to behind-the-scenes Black women catalysts like Ella Baker has created more space for examining the contributions of Black and white women on the ground."

"In 1969, Ella Baker, SNCC’s great mentor, pointed us in the direction of meaningful action when she said, “In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed.” This means that we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its original meaning – getting down to and understanding the root cause. Baker continued, “It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system.”"

"The practical and philosophical contribution of Ella Baker to SNCC, the southern civil rights movement, and the entire student movement cannot be overestimated. Baker asserted that what the movement needed was "the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership among other people." Baker nurtured this potential in the Black southern student movement. SNCC was created as a coordinating body to bring together and maximize the effectiveness of the local student movements. Baker, then fifty-six years old and increasingly frustrated with the hierarchical style of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which she had helped develop, challenged the students to consider the strategic question "[w]here do we go from here?""

"women played a crucial role in those early dangerous years of organizing in the South, and were looked on with admiration. Many of these were older women like Ella Baker, and Amelia Boynton in Selma, Alabama, and "Mama Dolly" in Albany, Georgia."

"what happened, I think, was Ella Baker was really sort of the godmother for SNCC. I met Ella in the summer of 1960. And in the spring of 1960, she had taken the initiative to get the student sit-in energy at Shaw, her alma mater, and held off on the big civil rights leaders, to say, “Look, the kids ought to have the opportunity to manage their own insurgency,” right? And so, SNCC was the encapsulation of the sit-in movement, the energy of the sit-in movement, right? And so, that — and SNCC took that energy into the Freedom Rides, because it was the SNCC energy which said to the president of the United States and the attorney general, “It doesn’t matter what you’re saying, that, you know, there’s some danger here. Our lives are in danger, but we’ve decided that, with our lives, this is what we want to do.” Right? And so, SNCC, really, and those students became the example for students all over the country — right? — the idea that students should draw a line in the sand and say, “Look, that’s it. That’s enough. We don’t want to live in this country unless we can change it.”"

"I idolize Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker. And they are supreme examples of what being freedom fighters, principled, fearless — or at least courageous. There’s a difference between being fearless and being courageous. Courageous is actually better, because everyone should have some fear about what might actually harm them...Ella Baker, of course, she was a person — among so many other things, she worked for all of the major civil rights organizations at some time. So she had experience across organizations. She also was doing that grassroots, very, very dangerous organizing in the Jim Crow South, in little towns, in rural areas. But she is probably best known for the person who inspired and made possible the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which is SNCC."

"(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, the most modest, and the wisest activist I know in the struggle for human rights today."

"one of the greatest radical Democrats in the twentieth century."

"Every time I see a young person who has come through the system to a stage where he could profit from the system and identify with it, but who identifies more with the struggle of black people who have not had his chance, every time I find such a person I take new hope. I feel a new life as a result of"

"as activist historian Barbara Ransby has emphasized, we cannot romanticize leaderlessness. She recently pointed out that: "Those who romanticize the concept of leaderless movements often misleadingly deploy Ella Baker's words, "Strong people don't need [a] strong leader." Baker delivered this message in various iterations over her fifty-year career working in the trenches of racial-justice struggles, but what she meant was specific and contextual. She was calling for people to disinvest from the notion of the messianic, charismatic leader who promises political salvation in exchange for deference. Baker also did not mean that movements would naturally emerge without collective analysis, serious strategizing, organizing, mobilizing and consensus building.""

"I have always thought what is needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership among other people."

"It's like, why? You're going to burn out. It's not humanly possible for you to just be your Lone Ranger self out there in the world. Ella Baker's question, "Who are your people?" when she would meet you is so important. Who are you accountable to in this world? Because that will tell me a lot about who you are."

"From the standpoint of the historical pattern of the society, which seems to assume that this (supporting roles) is the best role for women, I think that certainly the young people who are challenging this ought to be challenging it, and it ought to be changed."

"In the present era of devalued dreams and mocked hopes, we need to confront immoral power with moral power. That was the message of SNCC founder Ella Baker and the essence of the 1960s movements."

"Then Ella Baker spoke, holding before the crowd, as she did so often, a vision beyond the immediate: "Even if segregation is gone, we will still need to be free; we will still have to see that everyone has a job. Even if we can all vote, but if people are still hungry, we will not be free.... Singing alone is not enough; we need schools and learning.... Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit, a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.""

"I think you have to have a certain sense of your own value, and a sense of security on your part, to be able to forgo the glamor of what the leadership role offers."

"I did a good deal of speaking, and I went to Queens, I went to the upper West side, and the people very eagerly said they wanted school integration. But when you raised the question of whether they would permit or would welcome Blacks to live in the same houses with them, which was the only practical way at that stage to achieve integration, they squirmed."

"to me, when people themselves know what they are looking for and recognize that they can exercise some influence by action, that's progress."

"I've never believed that the people really were willing and able to pay the price of integration. From a practical standpoint, anyone who looked at the Harlem area knew that the potential for integration per se was basically impossible unless there were some radically innovative things done. And those innovative things would not be acceptable to those who ran the school system, nor to communities, nor even to the people who call themselves supporters of integration."

"after SNCC came into existence, of course, it opened up a new era of struggle."

"My basic sense of it has always been to get people to understand that in the long run they themselves are the only protection they have against violence or injustice."

"People have to be made to understand that they cannot look for salvation anywhere but to themselves."

"I have always felt it was a handicap for oppressed peoples to depend so largely upon a leader, because unfortunately in our culture, the charismatic leader usually becomes a leader because he has found a spot in the public limelight. It usually means he has been touted through the public media, which means that the media made him, and the media may undo him. There is also the danger in our culture that, because a person is called upon to give public statements and is acclaimed by the establishment, such a person gets to the point of believing that he is the movement. Such people get so involved with playing the game of being important that they exhaust themselves and their time, and they don't do the work of actually organizing people."

"When the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school desegregation came, I was serving as chairman of the Educational Committee of the New York branch. We began to deal with the problems of de facto segregation, and the results of the de facto segregation which were evidenced largely in the achievement levels of black children, going down instead of going up after they entered public school."

"In my organizational work, I have never thought in terms of my "making a contribution." I just thought of myself as functioning where there was a need. And if I have made a contribution I think it may be that I had some influence on a large number of people."

"As assistant field secretary of the branches of the NAACP, much of my work was in the South. At that time the NAACP was the leader on the cutting edge of social change. I remember when NAACP membership in the South was the basis for getting beaten up or even killed."

"You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me," she told two writers, Ellen Cantarow and Susan Gushee O'Malley. "The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders."

"You would go into areas where people were not yet organized in the NAACP and try to get them more involved. Maybe you would start with some simple thing like the fact that they had no street lights, or the fact that in the given area somebody had been arrested or had been jailed in a manner that was considered illegal and unfair, and the like. You would deal with whatever the local problem was, and on the basis of the needs of the people you would try to organize them in the NAACP."

"Black people who were living in the South were constantly living with violence. Part of the job was to help them to understand what that violence was and how they in an organized fashion could help to stem it. The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence even when it was perpetrated by the police or, in some instances, the state."

"The movement of the '50's and '60's was carried largely by women, since it came out of church groups. It was sort of second nature to women to play a supportive role. How many made a conscious decision on the basis of the larger goals, how many on the basis of habit pattern, I don't know. But it's true that the number of women who carried the movement is much larger than that of men. Black women have had to carry this role, and I think the younger women are insisting on an equal footing."

"The complexity of it all is perhaps revealed in a brief exchange which took place at a SNCC meeting between James Baldwin and Ella Baker. Someone had asked Baldwin about the role of whites in the movement. He replied, "A white man is a white man only if he says he is-but you haven't got to be white." Then Ella Baker added, "The place of the Negro is not as a Negro, but as a human being." And Baldwin said, "That's right." Later, Ella Baker returned to that idea and, noting Baldwin's exhortation that whites coming into the movement should forget they're white, said, "We too must forget we're Negro." Responding to what she detected as a rising mood of something akin to black nationalism among some SNCC workers, she said: "I can understand that as we grow in our own strength and as we flex our muscles of leadership... we can begin to feel that the other fellow should come through us. But this is not the way to create a new world.... We need to penetrate the mystery of life and perfect the mastery of life, and the latter requires understanding that human beings are human beings.""

"Strong people do not need strong leaders."

"Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit, a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind."

"Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens. (1964)"

"The development of the individual to his highest potential for the benefit of the group."

"One must ask: Why exactly is it that they don’t trust women? Well, we trust women. We trust women. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake: the freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship; the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride; the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis; and the freedom that unlocks all the others, the freedom to vote."