A [PARTIAL] Transcript of a Recorded Interview with Miss Ella Baker, Staff-Member-Consultant with SCEF, Southern Conference Educational Fund. By John Britton, Interviewer, Washington, D.C. June 19, 1968
Original faded transcript retyped by Kathy Emery.
Contents
This transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview conducted by John H. Britton, staff associate, Civil Rights Documentation Project, with Miss Ella Baker in Washington, D.C., June 19, 1968. [During the Poor Peoples Campaign "Solidarity Day" mass rally.]
Miss Baker is presently staff member and consultant with SCEF (Southern Conference Education Fund). She has devoted most of her life to the cause of civil rights. Having worked with the NAACP, SCLC, SNCC and now SCEF, Miss Baker has had the opportunity to witness, at first hand, the struggle for freedom in this country.
In this transcript, Miss Baker discusses the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., to SCLC leadership, she discusses the verify founding of SCLC, as well. Her impressions of Dr. King, after having worked with him for several years, and other leaders in SCLC, is very interesting. She also goes into much detail about SNCC and the rise of Stokely Carmichael and why she thinks he was so successful in winning followers. Miss Baker discusses the difficulties SCLC and SNCC have organizing, and staying organized.
This transcript represents the nearly verbatim record of the unrehearsed and more or less spontaneous conversation between Miss Baker and Mr. Britton. The reader, therefore, should bear in mind at all times that he is reading a text of the spoken, rather than the written, word.
Miss Baker has read and approved this transcript as corrected and the transcript is available according to the terms specified in his contract with the Civil Rights Documentation Project.
Britton:
We're in Washington, D.C., on June 19, 1968, with Miss Ella Baker who presently is a staff member-consultant with the Southern Conference Educational Fund. Miss Baker, let's start out very simply with something of your background: your birthplace, if you don't mind, your birthdate, and what education experience you have.
Baker:
I don't mind being born. I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, some 60-odd years ago.
Britton:
That's close enough.
Baker:
So, who knows. My prospects for the future might be hinging on this. I began school there, the first year of public school. When I was 7, the family shifted back to North Carolina. Both my parents came from North Carolina, in Warren County. My mother had a feeling that there was greater culture in North Carolina than obtained in Norfolk, Virginia, plus the fact she just didn't like the lowland-lying climate there. So, we shifted back to North Carolina, a little place called Littleton, which, incidentally, was the birthplace of the orfolk Journal and Guide. I grew up in North Carolina; had my schooling through the college level in North Carolina.
Britton:
What college did you attend?
Baker:
I went to what is known as, and was at that time, too, Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In fact, because of the lack of public school facilities, I began there. I began boarding school at the high school level; in fact, a year below the high school level. Why below the high school level? My mother didn't feel very satisfied about the English background that I had received in the public schools in Littleton. So, she insisted that I take a year under the high school level. So, I was in boarding school nine years.
Britton:
When one thinks of Ella Baker, it's just inconceivable to think that there was a time when you were not involved in civil rights. It seems that your total life has been immersed in some form of the civil rights fight. Is that true? Have you spent your entire professional life in civil rights?
Baker:
Well, in the first place, I've never credited myself with a professional life. But, basically, it has been that. I came out of a family background that involved itself with people. One of the stories that dominates our family literature was the fact that my maternal grandfather contracted for — I don't know under what terms — but, for a large section of the old slave plantation. He established himself — sisters and brothers, cousins, etc. on fifty- and sixty-acre plots. Out of it came sort of a community, which is still obtaining, to some extent.He was a minister, but he was a very unusual type of minister, especially for that period. He was the teacher-type to the extent that even when people began to shout in his church, he would call them by name and say, "Sit down. Nothing but the devil makes you make so much noise."
Britton:
He must not have been Baptist.
Baker:
Oh, yes, he was, but he was a very unusual person, and, to some people, a very taciturn type. He was supposed to have been a direct cross between one of the Indian tribes — I think it was Cherokee because I think I've run across that name, Ross — and African. Now, he wasn't too sure of his African tribal background. But the height of his amusement was to say, "Heh, heh, heh." He was terribly tickled then. But, with this background of being the teacher-type, the family began to orient in the direction of relating to community largely in terms of community needs.His farm, for instance, was mortgaged a couple of times, primarily to feed people in the community. Because they lived on a river bank and, at times, it overflowed and would ruin the corn crop, which was a big factor in farm life then, for both cattle and for people. So, this was the kind of background. The fighting background is exhibited in his attitude toward the Reconstruction period. I understand he and his sons began to participate in whatever political life there was in that vicinity.
Britton:
What was his name?
Baker:
His name was Michael Ross. You won't find it in the history books anywhere.
Britton:
You will now.
Baker:
His name was Michael R. Ross. I've never known what the "R" was for. He died, however, before I was 7. But he and I seemed to have had quite a nice relationship. He always called me grandlady, and he'd always talk to you as a person rather than as a child. So, I would go with him for his routes in his horse and buggy. So, my memory of him is pretty sharp, plus it has been accentuated by the stories that come out of the family. My mother was basically her father's daughter to the extent that she emulated much of what he did.
Britton:
Well, how did it all get started for you in the organized civil rights battling?
Baker:
Well, I guess the best way to describe that would be to connect with the fact that I came out of college just before the big Depression, and I came to New York. I, perhaps, at that stage, had the kind of ambition that others may have had; you know, namely based on the concept that if you were trained the world was out there waiting for you to provide a certain kind of leadership and give you an opportunity. But with the Depression, I began to see that there were certain social forces over which the individual had very little control.It wasn't an easy lesson for me to learn but I was able to learn it. It was out of that context that I began to explore in the area of ideology and the theory regarding social change. So, during the Depression years, I began to identify to some extent with the unemployed, the organization for the unemployed at that period.
But, I suppose that the first organized effort that might be considered something of civil rights was the Young Negroes' Cooperative League. Now, this offers certain contradictions at this point, perhaps, because it was stimulated by the writings of George Schayler who, at this point, is considered an arch-conservative, I understand. But, George, at that stage, was the voice of social action that many young people responded to. He was constantly advocating the concept that through cooperative effort, like cooperative buying clubs, etc., credit unions, that, as he said, the group could pull itself out of the barrel.
So, in '32 we organized the Young Negroes' Cooperative League and had some degree of success in terms of establishing stores and certainly buying clubs in various sections of the country. I was designated as — I don't know what exactly — I believe it was director. I'm not sure what it was, but it had to do with getting out the necessary mail and all of that — organization.
Baker:
Then, from the Cooperative League, I suppose, with the Depression lingering as long as it did, the next step in terms of, as you call it, professional relationship, was to go to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). I went there as an assistant field secretary, and so forth. So, I suppose that was the first organized step.
Britton:
Were you working under James Weldon Johnson at that time?No. James Weldon Johnson had been replaced by Walter White when I went there. It wasn't until the forties when I went there. I happened to have had some contact with James Weldon Johnson, largely in terms of forums and meetings, and so forth.
Britton:
I've been reading recently a book, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Dubois, and he was not very fond of Walter White. He described him as an egocentric man, a man who was conniving, etc., etc. Do you have any observations along that line?
Baker:
Well, I think that Walter's whole career is indicative of a large degree of egocentricity. Perhaps to be generous, you would have to say that he was a product of his period, which was that of self-projection in the name of organizational interest. He was also one of the best lobbyist of the period. But I think DuBois was in a better position than I even to evaluate him, and I think there was a great deal of self-interest, let's call it, that dominated his [White's] operations.When I went to the Association I learned a few things by observation. One of the things that used to strike me was his need to impress people, even just people who came into the office. He'd keep them waiting while you got the impression that he was terribly busy with calls to Washington. I've seen such exhibitions in that direction as having someone come out of his office to the switchboard operator — which at that time was sort of located in the center of wherever people were waiting — and ask to call such-and-such a place, or a call through to Mr. So-and-so, or somebody like this, you see.
But I gather from some other contacts I had with people of the period that egocentricity — Walter didn't have an exclusive corner on that. Unfortunately he also felt the need to impress government people. He had not learned, as many people still have not learned, that if you are involved with people and organizing them as a force, you didn't have to go and seek out the Establishment people. They would seek you out.
One of the particular things that impressed me was one visitor — I think it was — it wasn't the Prime Minister of England; it was the — I can't even recall his name now — that came over here. We were located then on 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, up several flights of rickety stairs, and he came all the way up those stairs to see Walter, largely because of certain kinds of impact, I think, that the Association seemingly was having. We tried to point out to Walter that this was an example of what could happen if you organize people; and instead of going to Washington trying to buttonhole the important people, they would be looking for you. But, this was not an easy lesson to learn in that period, let's say.
Britton:
Dr. DuBois was completely absent from the Association while you were there. Is that correct? I know he left in '34 and then came back.
Baker:
He came back almost simultaneous with my coming there. But I didn't have any close relationship with him because, although Dr. DuBois may not have been as egocentric — I don't know — he certainly was not the easiest person to approach. I think, certainly, those of us who were younger sort of respected that in terms of his preoccupation with deep thoughts. So, I made no effort to establish any relationship with him. However, he was in and out then.
Britton:
Moving up to the Sixties, how did you become associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)? Can you remember the circumstances?
Baker:
Oh, I think so. Well, my association with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is sort of predated by an effort that we were a part of here in New York City regarding the reaction to this 1954 Supreme Court [Brown v Board of Education] decision. As you well know, the court didn't attempt to implement the decision until a year later.In the interim period, I believe, the NAACP began to try to organize parents of Negro children to file petitions with the boards of education regarding the integration of the school system. You had some very severe economic reprisals against people in Mississippi and in South Carolina. So, in order to try to help to meet some of the physical needs and the economic needs of people in Clarendon County [SC] who had been displaced from the land, and otherwise, and in certain sections of Mississippi, we organized in New York City something called "In Friendship."
This In Friendship — out of it came certain connections with the liberal labor establishment. Among the personalities that were involved were Bayard Rustin and a person from the American Jewish Congress, Stanley Levinson.
I had had some association with Stanley prior to that in connection with my presidency of a local NAACP branch. Stanley and I had been associated in fighting the McCarran-Walter Act, I believe it was.
[The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 — commonly referred to as the "Walter-McCarran Act" or "McCarran-Walter Act" — codified and systematized U.S. immigration laws. Among its provisions were political rules that for the first time applied belief restrictions barring "subversives" from entering the country as immigrants — or even as visitors. The Act also permitted the deportation of foreign-born U.S. citizens if they were suspected of holding "subversive" beliefs or engaging in "subversive" activities such as organizing labor unions or opposing segregation.Over time, the definitions of "subversive" were expanded from socialist, anarchist, civil rights and anti-racism beliefs to include anti-colonialism, pro-peace or anti-nuclear weapons, feminism, environmentalism, and gay-rights. Some of the famous people blocked under the Act from visiting America include Nobel Prize winners like the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the Italian playwright Dario Fo. Other examples include South African anti-apartheid writers Doris Lessing and Dennis Brutus, the French philosopher Michel Foucault, and the Canadian environmentalist Farley Mowat. During this same period in the 1950s and '60s, Walter-McCarran Act deportations were used against American leftists and civil rights activists.]
There was a kind of a natural association, and Bayard became involved in it. We began to talk about the need for developing in the South a mass force that would somewhat become a counterbalance, let's call it, to the NAACP, which was based largely in terms of leadership in the North. So out of the discussions came the concept of Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Both Stanley and Bayard were in touch with Martin, and so we began to render certain kinds of services behind the scenes.
At the point at which the Conference was organized formally, we were there taking care of the drafting of statements. Bayard and I were there running off statements, and things that were behind the scenes, in '57, I believe it was.
Britton:
So, what you're saying, then, is that the genesis of the idea for SCLC started in the minds of the people in the North, not in Montgomery?
Baker:
That's correct. You see, if you recall, after the [Montgomery Bus Boycott] there was almost sort of a complete let down. Nothing was happening. In fact, after I had become associated with the leadership from Montgomery, question was raised about why there was this not-knowing, why there was no organizational machinery for making use of the people who had been involved in the boycott?I think, to some extent as it seems to have been my characteristic in raising certain kinds of questions, I irritated Dr. King in raising this question. I raised it at a meeting at which he was speaking. I think his rationale was something to the effect that after a big demonstrative type of action, there was a natural let-down and a need for people to sort of catch their breath, you see, which, of course, I didn't quite agree with. But, nevertheless, this was what took place.
So, I don't think that the leadership of Montgomery was prepared to capitalize, let's put it, on the projection that had come out of the Montgomery situation. Certainly, they had not reached the point of developing an organizational format for the expansion of it. So discussions emanated, to a large extent, from up this way.
Britton:
When you say, "We began this organization called In Friendship," who were the we?
Baker:
Well, the usual sort of configuration of labor and black people and, I guess, the so-called liberal forces. Now, in terms of names, I can recall several names. Of course, A. Philip Randolph was a personality element. And I guess it came out of some discussion with Stanley and others we brought in; with people like Cleveland Robinson of District 65 of the Wholesale, Retail, or whatever it is, Worker's Union; some of the leadership out of the American Jewish Labor Committee, and some of the pacifist groups — and this is how Bayard was involved because his original leadership role was in the pacifist movement. So, forces like that — we had names — but these are some of the names.
Britton:
You mentioned also that you were playing a role behind the scenes, that you were trying to get this SCLC off the ground. Is it possible for you to tell us the nature of the behind-the-scenes action that you were carrying on?
Baker:
I mentioned the fact that the concepts of how best to get a force in the South with some degree of mass orientation — this came out of certain discussions. We used to sit up until two and three o'clock in the morning, and we'd get involved with it. The next step, I suppose, was providing a certain amount of service, like when the meetings were held. There were three meetings, as I recall, held prior to the actual organizing meeting in February of '57 in Atlanta.There was the meeting in New Orleans, which I did not attend. I think Bayard went down. Then there was a meeting in Montgomery, which I did attend and for which I rendered such services as drafting statements, talking with them in terms of things that perhaps ought to be said or could be said, drafting the statements, providing the mimeographing skill, or getting somebody to do it, to get out whatever statements were to be presented, and then consulting with them in the interim, between meetings, you know, when questions would be raised.
At that stage neither of the two young men, who were Ralph Abernathy and Martin, had had too much organizational experience and I don't think anybody will claim that the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) provided a great deal of organization know-how to people who hadn't had any. So the services that were rendered were in the direction, you know, of consulting. Fortunately, I had a great deal of connection with personalities who were involved in so-called civil rights movements. And maybe I had some judgments to offer. I think this was the type of original service that was rendered.
Britton:
Why was it that you people in New York who had these discussions looked to King, Abernathy, that contingent in Montgomery, rather than, say, Reverend William Holmes Borders or John Wesley Dobbs in Atlanta, or somebody in Memphis? Why was Montgomery the center of attention? I know the answer appears obvious, but maybe there's another reason?
Baker:
Well, the obvious reason, as you intimated, was the fact that here had taken place a movement that involved masses of people. It suggested the possibility that there could be a much wider extension of this mass-type action, which carried with it a certain amount of confrontation. That was part of it.I think the reasons for not selecting persons like the Reverend Borders and John Wesley Dobbs were, in my book rather obvious reasons: because they were people who were basically oriented in the direction of the established method of not confronting the power structure, but trying to elicit concessions by various and sundry means of, well, let's call it accommodating leadership. They had accommodated themselves to the system, and their sense of achievement was largely in the direction of the extent to which you, as the individual, could become acceptable to or accepted by the power structure; and you became a negotiator for people, not a leader of developing people at all.
Those of us who had been talking, I think our concept of the need for extending this mass action in the South was also predicated upon the realization that the NAACP had the mechanics in terms of the spread of its membership for the development of mass action. But, its philosophy had not been expressed in the direction of real confrontation or using mass action as a means of confrontation.
Basically, I think personally, I've always felt that the Association got itself hung-up in what I call its legal successes. Having had so many outstanding legal successes, it definitely seemed to have oriented its thinking in the direction that the way to achieve was through the courts. It hasn't departed too far from that yet. So, I said to you that when I came out of the Depression, I came out of it with a different point of view as to what constituted success. And that was even just even personal success.
I began to feel that my greatest sense of success would raise the level of masses of people, rather than the individual being accepted by the Establishment. So, this kind of personal thinking, combined with, say, even the little bit more radical thinking — because at one time the pacifist movement was a very radical concept. And then, I think, in all probability, Stanley had come out of the New York Left there, and I had had exposure to it because I had been friendly with people who were in the Communist party and all the rest of the Left forces, which were oriented in the direction of mass action.
Certainly, that combination from the three individuals could not lend itself to looking toward a leadership that was an accommodating leadership. And by that time, I believe, the Myrdal study had been made, and if we hadn't had anything else to raise questions, this in itself would have been something to provoke thought in the direction of the value of accommodating leadership.
[An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, by Gunnar Myrdal, 1944. An extensive study of race and race-relations in the U.S. funded by the Carnegie Foundation. It was widely read by liberal and progressive thinkers who it deeply influenced. Myrdal argued that the "Negro problem" of crippling poverty, lack of education, political powerlessness, social alienation, and so on, was the result of white racism, both individual and institutional, rather than any inherent inferiority among Blacks. One of his conclusions was that northern whites, who rarely encountered or interacted with Black, were largely ignorant about the realities faced by Blacks, and that therefore "to get publicity is of the highest strategic importance to the Negro people."]
Britton:
What role, if any, did the Fellowship of Reconciliation play in the founding of SCLC?
Baker:
Well, I think the role of the Fellowship, as far as I would be able to judge, would be in two stages. At the initial onset of the [Montgomery bus] boycott, the personalities who were in the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which included — who was the white fellow who was available at that time? Who's the leader now?
Britton:
I've forgotten his name too.
Baker:
This is awful.
Mrs. Rita Hold:
Was it [James] Peck?
Baker:
No, not Jim Peck. Jim was always there, but his fellow, I think, perhaps is still something of a figure. [George] Houser — no, it wasn't Houser. Houser had left then. Who came after Houser? I honestly can't think of his name. It may come.But he went down to Montgomery and had a great deal of conversation with Martin, and no doubt, had a strengthened whatever germ of an idea about a nonviolent movement Martin had. Then, I think, Bayard went down, and of course, Bayard had been in the Fellowship of Reconciliation for a long time. As you know, the basis of the pacifist movement was nonviolence. So, that was a stage at which they had influence on the thinking and the articulation of the nonviolent concept coming out of Montgomery. That was one stage.
I don't know whether the other stage was largely in terms of whatever forces from the Fellowship of Reconciliation here in New York were present to be part of this In Friendship thing. And out of In Friendship came these concepts of trying to organize something after the boycott.
Britton:
Do you know whether Dr. King was receptive to this idea of leadership in the beginning? I've always heard that his total ambition was to, you know, be really a college professor of theology, and that his role as a civil rights leader really frustrated that basic desire. Do you know if that's true? I don't know whether it is or not. But, do you know what his degree of receptiveness was when these people began to confront him with the idea of leadership?
Baker:
Well, I think you would be in a better position to get a truer picture of that from a person like Ed Nixon of Montgomery. E.D. Nixon. I think it would be very relevant and, to me, highly important if you interviewed Nixon for several reaons.Number one, Nixon was the one force in Montgomery for a number of years that made any effort in the direction of challenging the power structure. Ed Nixon's source of direction for that comes out of his relationship with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Care Porters and the Randolph philosophy of mass action. So, Ed Nixon really was the force that conceived of the boycott and drew up the original papers for the boycott.
King was one of the two young ministers — and you know how directly oriented the Negro community still is towards the minister as the leader. There was Ralph Abernathy and Martin King, and there was Ed Nixon, whom everybody knew was the force behind the concept of the time to strike on this boycott, I mean, to organize a boycott.
The story that I have from Ed is to this effect: that the meeting for choosing a chairman, or a meeting subsequent to the marvelous results of that first day of staying off the buses, was called. But Ed Nixon, being a porter, was on his run. Had Ed been there, in all probability, out of deference to his initial energies, he would have been named chairman. He probably would not have satisfied the total community because Ed is not a trained man in the sense of college degrees and speaking the proper English, etc. and so forth. But, Ed was on his run, and I understand furtherthat there was discussion as to who would be named chairman.
There were two other persons in the community who had been active over a long period of time in whatever civil rights activity there was, and one was a Professor Pearson. He had done some studies of black-belt voting, especially out in those counties that, in the beginning of '58, no Negroes were voting in. The other was Coach Rufus Lewis. He had been involved also in efforts within Montgomery to increase the Negro registaration. Each of them ere deacons. Both, rather, were deacons. One was deacon in Martin's church and another was a deacon in Ralph's church. And both of them had ambitions for their pastors, let's say, at this particular time.
The story, as I got it, was just a question of who got the floor first. It so happened that the deacon from Martin's church — and I'm not sure which was which now — got the floor first and nominated Dr. King as chairman. The great spirit of unity that prevailed and the push for unanimity was of such that nobody questioned it. Once the nomination was made, it became that. This is how he was thrust into the role.
Now, as respecting his resistance, I don't think, at the stage that it took place, he felt he could resist. I think, basically, Martin sort of went along with people's reaction to him because at certain stages, at least early, I questioned the — maybe I should backtrack a little. Shortly after I became associated with the idea of a SCLC, there was a — what do they call it? An annual — it's not a reunion. What do you call a celebration of an event?
Britton:
Anniversary?
Baker:
Anniversary, yeah. The anniversary of the Montgomery boycott was being celebrated, and the handbill that was out, and all whatever literature that was circulated, didn't say practically anything about movement or what the movement stood for, what it had done, or anything, but was simply adulation of the leader, you know, Dr. King. I raised the question with him about this: "Why permit it?" He said, "Well, I don't want to. The people want to do this." You see?So, Martin wasn't one to buck forces too much, at least at that stage. Now I don't know how he developed in the latter period, but I don't think his resistance was so pointed that he ever raised the question of, "why me" with the group. He might have pondered on it to himself, but he just went along, just accepted it.
Britton:
Did the same kind of thing prevail when he was chosen as leader of SCLC proper?
Baker:
Yes, it was. I think you can find some rationales for that if we look at the background out of which he came. Martin had come out of a highly competitive, black, middle-class background. In your short stay in Atlanta, I'm sure you saw that there was great competition between Martin's father and John Wesley Dobbs in terms of family status. You know, the bragging about whose child got a master's degree first and whose child, maybe, was the first Ph.D. Out of a background like that, the business of becoming a chairman of an important movement or a movement that symbolizes a certain amount of prestige is something you don't resist easily. Unless you had developed a certain independence of value, a certain independent system of value, a system of values that was independent from this middle-class drive for recognition. This has been my explanation of part of his general role. So, he accepted this without too much resistance. In fact, none that I could ever see, and at certain points I was close enough to see something.
Britton:
Speaking of your closeness, when was it that you joined the staff?
Baker:
Well, after the '57 initial meeting — I was up this way working, not as a staff person — there became the need for a much more definite organized office. What you'd had prior to that time were these big meetings in different places, and there was nobody to pull anything together. Everything was left to Dr. King and the group that was around him. So, out of other thinking and some degree, I think, of prodding from the ministers who had been pulled together, there was the need for a more formal organization that would have an office, that would have a staff and that would have a program. So it reached the point where this became something that had to be done.Bayard Rustin had been asked to come and set up the office. There are a number of things that are said as to why he didn't go, but from this end, he said he was too busy to go. I suppose this is one of the few times in my life that I accepted being used by people. He and Stanley had had a conference out at the airport with Martin, and there was the need to start this thing right away. Because I think there was some pushing from the bottom as to, "What you're really going to do?" What kind of program are you planning? We've had these gig meetings, now, what's coming next?"
So, they came back to the usual place that we sat up and talked all night and said that they had promised that I would come to Atlanta almost immediately. And this, of course, irritated me because I don't like anyone to commit me. But, my sense of values carries with it something to this effect: that the welfare of the whole, of the people or a group of people, is much more important than the ego satisfaction of the individual. So, I said, "No, I can't go — let's call it tomorrow," because it was almost immediately that they thought. I said, "But I will go at a certain date."
So, on the 9th of January — I think it was — 1958, I went into Atlanta to head up what was considered the first major project of SCLC as such, which was the having of simultaneous meetings in 20-odd cities on the same night. The night that had been set was the 12th of February.
There was no office. There wasn't anything. I got a room at the Hotel Savoy is it, the Savoy Hotel, the old hotel there on Auburn Avenue. I stayed there a week. I worked out of my vest picket [sic] and whatever access I could have to a telephone at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Frequently, I had to make use of pay coin telephones. So that went on for maybe a week. I know I didn't have any contact with Dr. King.
Finally, Sam Williams, who was on the board — the Reverend Sam Williams, I should say; I have a tendency not to give all these credit lines, I guess. Dr. Sam Williams was helpful in securing office space and also in getting a young woman to come in to be of some help. So we started the office over there, 208, I believe it was. So, on the 12th of February SCLC had, I think, 21 meetings held in such places as Mississippi, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, etc.
Britton:
What was the purpose of these meetings?
Baker:
The purpose of these meetings was supposed to rally people to register and to vote. The first piece of printed literature that they had, I used the old press clipping technique of clipping out even just words and letters and putting together — because they didn't have any money — putting together a little pamphlet on the co-question of registration and voting. I have a couple of them around. If you need it, you can have it. I had it offset and this was the first piece of literature. These meetings were supposed to be rallying people for a great registration movement. So, that's how I got there.I had planned to stay a week, about two weeks. You see, I got there on the 9th of January [1958]. The thing was to take place on the 12th of February, and I had estimated it would take me two weeks to kind of pull it together and clean it up, and turn over. I didn't have that opportunity. The reason was that there was nobody to take over. I think there was some opposition, maybe because of Bayard's projection in some other ways to having him come to Atlanta. I never was told this, except informally by other people.
There was an effort being made, I know at the time, to secure Dr. Pitts. You remember, Lucius Pitts? I had some conversation with him because I had known him out of my NAACP days, somewhat, and it became clear that this was not what he thought he should do. So, then SCLC forces were looking for, naturally, a man and a minister. That wasn't an easy combination to find at the level at which they were at the time, you see? So, I stayed on and came back this way periodically because, at that stage, I was still playing mama to my niece, and she was graduating from college that year. So, I would come back periodically.
Britton:
Tell me this. Why, other than an obvious reason, was it chosen to have an organization so dominated by Baptist ministers, or by ministers, period? This seems to be a criticism of SCLC, that all through the years there are certain things that ministers can't seem to grasp hold of.
Baker:
This is quite true.
Britton:
Was that a purposeful thing in order to get the Christian thing in there? Were they the only ones who were considered pragmatically free enough to do this kind of thing?
Baker:
I don't think any considerations of that nature really went into the thinking of the ministers who had the power to set up the format for their meeting.
Britton:
They had to [sic] power to put themselves in office?
Baker:
Yes. Now, you see, in the first place, it came out of a minister orientation because both Ralph and Martin were ministers. Martin had become the great symbol, you know, of leadership, and, of course, out of the old background that the minister is the [community] leader. And the people from Montgomery, with Martin's leadership, were the ones to decide on who was to be called for this initial organizing meeting [held in Atlanta, January 10-11, 1957].Most of the people who came — the bulwark of visitors; supposed to have been about a hundred — most of the people were ministers. The one thing that might well be said at that point for the group that came, they would have been willing to buy a much more thought-oriented type program than evolved if the leadership had advanced to the stage of being able to push that.
One of the things that certifies this to me is that at this meeting there were a series of papers — to a large extent, many of them, certainly on the nonviolent bit, had been prepared by Bayard; and I had dressed them up, and a couple of others that were prepared on factual materials out of the civil rights background — had been presented to these guys. They struggled that one day trying to deal with these issues.
But two things intervened. One was the fact that the night before the meeting took place, you had these bombings of several churches, including Ralph's church in Montgomery. Both Ralph and Martin went back to Montgomery the night before. So, when they came back to the meeting, let's say that the issue uppermost in their minds and, to some extent, the thing to which the ministers were most responsive was what had happened in Montgomery. That would be one thing.
The other, I think, factor that has to be honestly said is that Martin was not yet ready for the kind of leadership that would inspire these men to really grapple with thought-oriented, or ideological differences and patterns of organization. So the easiest thing having been to call together ministers and they were there — they became the officers. They became the institution called SCLC. And so they perpetuated their own.
Britton:
To get to a sort of mundane question, do you know who it was, or how the name Southern Christian Leadership Conference was selected? Who named it?
Baker:
Well, I think the name was selected — I know it came out of that meeting in Montgomery [August 1957], which I mentioned that I attended. Murray Kempton, incidentally, was at that meeting. There was a good deal of discussion of name. I think there had been some suggestions, let's call it of the Southern Leadership Conference. As I remember, first it was the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation, or something. I've forgotten. It was tying up with what had happened in Montgomery. But at the meeting, there was a great deal of discussion, to say the least, of the name and the fact that these were Christian ministers and that we had to reflect this in the program. Then it became a question of reflecting it in the name. There was a very interesting observation made. I think it was made by Smith — not Julian Smith of Atlanta.
Britton:
Kelly Miller [Smith, of Nashville]?
Baker:
No, not Kelly. Kelly Miller was more of a thoughtful fellow.You know, the short fellow who was in Arkansas for a while. Quite a talker? He's not so terribly short. I don't think he's ever had too much of a pastoral role in Atlanta, but apparently he has good money.
Britton:
Oh, I know what you mean.
Baker:
Yeah, what was his name? It's not Aaron.
Britton:
I do know who you mean.
Baker:
I can't think of his name. But he led quite a blockade, not a blockade, but something like — well, it developed as a blockade. But, he led quite an argument against having any organization that didn't carry the Christian concept. Then part of the thought that was developed was that, well, if you're confronting the power structure, you might be less suspect being called Christian. And you would, perhaps, avoid being tagged as "Red" by being called "Christian." The argument against that was that you excluded people who might not be Christian, you know, like the Jewish religion, or something like this. So, the filibuster led by Smith finally prevailed and they called themselves the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I think this was the decision.
Britton:
People today tend to associate SCLC with mass demonstrations. There was the March on Washington, Selma-to-Montgomery and the Poor People's Campaign that's going on now. Now, I don't remember when the first big demonstration got started, led by SCLC. Maybe it was Albany [GA] in '62. But prior to the big demonstration era, what was SCLC doing? Under your tenure there from, say, '58 — I think you left in '60 — what was the focus of the program that SCLC had going?
Baker:
There was effort to focus the program in several directions. It was very difficult to get it from being oriented in the direction of just big meetings; you know, having an annual conference, and a big meeting, or having other big meetings. Now for some of the things that did take place.Number one, there was the first large supposedly leadership conference that was sort of a study-session-workshop leadership conference on nonviolence in the South was held at Spelman College. I can't recall the dates, but I have the material for the dates. I had the responsibility for coordinating that. We set that up and had it. A number of leaders from different parts of the country — some lay persons who had not been involved in the original SCLC setup — came. It was a week-long conference.
I think this was the first time that I saw Wyatt Walker. I don't know, I may have met him here before, but Wyatt Walker and some people came from Petersburg [VA]; and people from Arkansas and other sections; Dr. Simpkins from Shreveport, Louisiana, and some of the established personnel.
You were asking the direction of some of the other programs. So, I was saying that you had this workshop on nonviolence, which was the first on any large scale that they had had. Almost simultaneous with that, I believe, or at least shortly after that, I tried to relate them somewhat to, say the African personalities. Tom Mboya came over and we had a dinner down there for Tom Mboya. You remember that?
[Tom Mboya was a leader of the Kenya anti-colonial struggle against Great Britain.]Programmatically, we also attempted, in connection with the '58 initial hearing of the Civil Rights Commission — you know, the hearing in Montgomery for Alabama — prior to the hearing, we tried to get the leadership to lend itself to going into some of these counties in Alabama, and especially the ones, Wilcox County and the like, in which Negroes had not voted.
We did not succeed too much in that direction. But this Professor Pearson and, I think, {UNCLEAR} (Irving?). It was Lewis and I — Coach [Rufus] Lewis and I — we visited some places in Wilcox County, and so forth, and tried, in addition to Macon County — Tuskegee — being represented at the hearing, to get some of the other counties. We did have some success with that.
We also used that as the basis for at least trying to get some of the leadership from other areas to come and listen, and to have some consultation after that in terms of what next, where they were. I went into Shreveport in '59 to set up the office there for the local movement. We conducted, I think, the first of certainly the recent stand-ins at voter registration lines. We had an all-day stand-in at Catto Parish there for, I guess, several hundred people trying to register, and got some reactions of various sort there.
Also while in Shreveport we pulled together the 68 witnesses, or the testimonies, for the people who were to testify in a Louisiana hearing. If you remember, the Louisiana hearing was postponed several times, and finally it was held. But it was while I was in Shreveport working with Dr. Simpkins and the movement there that we pulled together this sort of thing.
So, the thrust of the program, programmatic thrust, was in the direction of voter registration, mass voter registration and, supposedly, education. But there was no machinery, no staff, except me. And so, I was functioning that way.
Britton:
Was there, at this period, a mood within the organization for a confrontation, or did that come later —this physical confrontation, mass confrontation?
Baker:
Not too much of a mood there. You see, the mass confrontation, I think, to be honest, sort of emanated from the initial work of somebody else instead of SCLC. If you take Albany; I don't know whether you recall how Albany got started. There were two little guys who went up there first. One was Cordell Hull who was then in his teens — not Cordell Hull — Cordell Reagan, who came out of the Nashville movement, and Charles Sherrod, who came out of the Richmond, Virginia, movement.They went up for the purpose of carrying out a SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] program. SNCC was more politically oriented. Part and parcel of the initial SNCC efforts was to not only go in for voter registration, but for political participation. And it elected to go into the hard-core, black-belt areas for the reason, at that stage, as you well know, it was the rural politicians who dominated the political machinery, certainly, say, in Georgia and in most of the other Southern states; but in Georgia, especially with that county unit vote system which gave a preponderance of power to small counties. So, we elected to go into Albany for the purpose of developing a movement towards political participation.
They went in and, being young, their first approach was to students. They had lots of confrontations over at Albany State. Then they also attempted to meet with some of the young people who, at that stage, were either being organized by, or had been organized by the NAACP in a youth chapter. They had very sharp confrontations with [regional NAACP leader] Mrs. Ruby Hurley at that stage, it seems.
It was fortunate that Charles Sherrod was the kind of personality that he is, and a minister. So he was able to have some rapport with that emerging Albany group. Also, if you recall, there were some younger forces in that Albany set-up, like the Kings — C.B. King and Slater, especially [no relation to Martin Luther King]. Then there was this woman who been the dean of Spelman College at one time. I can't recall her name, either.
But these were younger forces that had some concept of confrontation. I mean, they had reached the point of realizing that the petitioning process was certainly not the thing, not enough, and that the concept of going out and trying to organize people to register and vote, by itself, was not enough. So, they were amenable to the kind of dialogue that the SNCC people carried in there.
So the SNCC people got in very well there. Charles Jones then moved in, and he, being much more of the dramatic personality, they did a darn good job of organizing that community for action. They had started the marches and I think some 700 people had been arrested prior to Martin's coming there. It's always a way to be invited to places. So you get invited.
With this world-wide charisma that he had obtained, or the charismatic state he had reached, why naturally, the people there — [local Albany leader] Dr. Anderson was his classmate or his schoolmate — and all these roles naturally sort of dovetailed to invite him there. And once he's invited there, who becomes the center of attention? Martin becomes the center of attention. I believe that this was the first of the dramatic confrontations that he was party to after Montgomery. Am I right there?
Britton:
I think you're right there, yeah.
Baker:
And Selma, two years before, I think — it was certainly nearly two years before Selma — the SNCC people had gone in. The first meeting of any proportion that was held there. Jim Forman spoke. The second was in [June?] of whatever year that was [1963]. I spoke, and the place was surrounded by deputies, you know, outside the church. Do you remember when Dick Gregory went in, and some other people went in to work? More SNCC people went in there to work. So, the basis for confrontation had been laid by the SNCC people. So, comes the big confrontation in Selma, it was the parlaying as it had been done in Albany.Of course, in Birmingham, SNCC was not party to that, but you had, as you know, in Birmingham a well-established movement under Fred Shuttlesworth. Whatever else may be said about what is happening in Birmingham, that movement was a much more mass-oriented movement in terms of followship. I won't say leadership, but followship. The individual courage demonstrated by Shuttlesworth, in terms of the arrests that he had confronted, and the jailings — there was another fellow there who had been beaten with chains.
Britton:
Billups?
Baker:
Billups, yes, the Reverend Mr. Billups. Just the history of Birmingham, of mass reaction in Birmingham, coming out of sort of a strong, not so much organized labor sentiment, but there were more rough and tumble people there.I know one guy there who then was in his 60's who had several notches on his gun in terms of what he had done to protect himself and to protect the first efforts of the United Mine Workers down there. I remember in the '40's going in there and there was a great deal of rapport, on surface, at least, between white and black union members. So you had a different setting there — in Birmingham. And by the time Martin came in there, Fred and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights had set the pace for confrontation.
There were periods at which there was a great deal of debate. You know, when the confrontation was called off, Fred was in bed then. I hope you have a chance to talk with him because I know personally that he was very much against the calling off of the demonstration. He had been laid low with the blow of the water-hose, and the decision to call off the demonstration was decided up there in the motel room with Dr. King and his associates and [Justice Department official] John Doar. I think it was John Doar. I sat in on it awhile because Mrs. Shuttlesworth insisted that I accompany her there. That's the only way I got in on it.
So, when you say how the concept of mass confrontation arose, I think it developed out of several forces, but one of them was that the SNCC forces was there to be reckoned with. It had moved into Mississippi. It had moved into Selma. As I said, Albany was the first move. And that was something that had to be reckoned with by SCLC in terms of its leadership role, if nothing else.
Britton:
Why did SCLC never go to Mississippi?
Baker:
Well, I don't know, except that the only simple answer, I think, is that SCLC had never really developed an organizing technique. I've always characterized the difference in saying that they went in for mobilization. And, to be honest, in terms of the historical facts, their mobilization usually was predicated upon some effort at organizing by someone else. And, at this stage, it was largely SNCC.As far as Mississippi was concerned, SNCC was too strong of a force, I think, there for any effort that comes in to sort of supercede the leadership that's involved there, because SNCC did involve local people. It involved local people who were not in the ministerial orientation. It had developed a symbolic umbrella covering which could involve all the civil rights groupings. You know, the COFO thing was designed as an umbrella covering for one purpose — well, one major reason. You remember when the organization for the voter registration program under Wiley Branton —
Britton:
Voter Education Project?
Baker:
— Voter Education Project, yes, was set up? There was great question as to how you would allocate the money, say, in Mississippi. You were faced with the fact that the only group that was functioning at all, in terms of reaching the people and attempting to register them, was SNCC, although, nominally, you had the NAACP there with the prestigious connections like Dr. Aaron Henry and national office connection, and the [Medgar] Evers' concept, you see, Evers' image, left there. Evers was there for a while. You had that factor there, and, I think, Wiley Branton, I'm sure, having come out of the NAACP setup, was not adverse to — he was not amenable, I'll say, to the idea of funding the money through SNCC alone. Yet, realistically, there was nobody there doing anything but SNCC — SNCC and the CORE people who were in there.So, Bob Moses [of SNCC] and Dave Dennis [of CORE] drafted a proposal, which set up this umbrella composed of organizational ties from SCLC, and CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], and SNCC, and NAACP. And, if you recall, through the press, I think, it was clearly stated by the national office of the NAACP that it was not really affiliated, that whatever affiliation there was, was through its state body, which was Aaron Henry. SCLC had never established a really strong base in Mississippi, but we had carried out a couple of meetings there. I think we had a meeting of ministers in Mississippi. I remember that. So that, I think, explains it. They didn't have an organizing force.
Britton:
You can sort of tell the friends of an organization by those people or institutions that put their money where their mouths are, I don't know whether you were involved in fund-raising while you were on the staff of SCLC, but, perhaps, you can still tell us those friends who put their money where their mouths were in the very beginning, when SCLC got started.
Baker:
Well, when SCLC got started, I think there were some funds left in the treasury of the Montgomery Improvement Association, I think; just a limited amount of it. Then it started itself in the direction of going to towns and having big mass meetings and having the money — you know, the usual church pattern of people putting in money. The first contribution of any size came from the United Packinghouse Workers. It was about $11,000, as I recall [equal to about $90,000 in 2014].
Britton:
Was that from Ralph Helstein in Chicago?
Baker:
No, it wasn't directly from Helstein, per se. It was organized by Lashley. Lashley had come to several of the SCLC meetings — and he and another fellow, both black — and they were in the leadership role there in Chicago. But they were interested in seeing this kind of mass movement develop and had visions of, perhaps, some alignment in terms of a labor thrust. They initiated through the shops of the Packinghouse Workers, a drive out of which they collected this $11,000. So, it was not a treasury gift.You know the usual pattern; the union can have a treasury out of which the international can make a contribution. But this was not a gift from the treasury. It was collected through shop chairmen and the like, and the money was given to SCLC. That was the first big gift.
There were individuals, I'm sure, out of the context here of Stanley Levison's relationship with the Jewish liberal forces, that had made contributions. I remember one such contribution before they moved from Montgomery. An associate in the real estate business with Stanley had lost a son in the war, and she wanted to do something in memory of him. So, she made available certain monies to be used by the emerging leadership there in Montgomery. I'm sure other individuals did.
Britton:
I was wondering about that because SCLC now seems to have such a partiality to UAW [United Automobile Workers]. And I wondered if UAW was among those who were there first.
Baker:
No.
Britton:
For instance, today is called Solidarity Day, which is very interesting to me. [Solidarity is the name of the UAW monthly membership magazine.]
Baker:
Oh, I think it is. It's a sort of a borrowing of the more militant. The slogan of more militant days meant something. But, what does it mean now is the question. No, UAW was not among the first. I can testify to that. I think where UAW began to associate with them, I would think — I don't know all the background because I left there in '60, number one. In '60, when I left the association, the amount of money it had was not phenomenal, let's say.
Baker:
But, I think part of the association goes back to the mass marches in Washington. You remember the first mass demonstration here of recent vintage in Washington was the Prayer Pilgrimage of '57.Now, this also was part of the business of developing a force in the South and sort of linking it up with what was ostensibly a force in the North. If you recall, the triumvirate leadership was Dr. King, Mr. Wilkins — Roy Wilkins [of the NAACP] — and A. Philip Randolph [of the Sleeping Car Porters union]; A. Philip Randolph being the link that could bridge whatever gap there might have been — and there were gaps, of course — between NAACP and Dr. King's movement.
No doubt, certainly within the NAACP camp, there was some question as to whether there was any validity for the development of a movement like this SCLC. Part of the SCLC's deference to the existence of NAACP was a decision, consciously made and no doubt stimulated by some discussions, that there would not be a membership fee [to join SCLC]. It would not be a membership organization because they did not want to compete with NAACP, which was a membership organization. So the '57 pilgrimage, Prayer Pilgrimage, was held here in Washington, and that was the first joint action by King, Wilkins, and Randolph.
Then there were two other school marches held here in Washington, one of which was held after I had gone to — both maybe were held after I had gone to Atlanta. And this emanated, to a large extent, out of the efforts in New York City for the fight against de facto segregation, which started earlier than'57 'cause it was during the period I was with the local branch of the NAACP that we first started that out. So, I think this explains — I hope I ..., the question you raised.
Britton:
When you left SCLC, did you have a feeling of accomplishment, or were you disillusioned, bitter, or what? I've heard it implied from various sources that you were not happy when you left.
Baker:
I was not happy in what respect? I wasn't happy at leaving?
Britton:
No, not in that respect. Unhappy that, well, I think, Reverend Walker was coming down there, and that you felt that you had been usurped in the leadership. This has been —
Baker:
This is interesting. Go ahead. Maybe you can help me. Go ahead, further.
Britton:
This is really all I've heard from time to time.
Baker:
No. In the first place, I had known, number one, that there would never be any role for me in the leadership capacity with SCLC. Why? First, I'm a woman. Also, I'm not a minister. And second, I am a person that feels that I have to maintain some degree of personal integrity and be my own barometer of what is important and what is not, which meant that even if there had been any inclination on the part of the leadership — which I'm sure there never would be — of me being in an important leadership role there, I knew that my penchant for speaking honestly about what I considered directions would not be well tolerated.In the first place, the combination of being a woman, and an older woman, presented some problems. Number one, I was old enough to be the {UNCLEAR} of the leadership. The combination of the basic attitude of men, and {UNCLEAR}, due to what the role of women in their church setup is — that of taking orders, not providing leadership — and the ego that is involved — the ego problems involved in having to feel that here is someone who had the capacity for a certain amount of leadership and, certainly, had more information about a lot of things than they possessed at that time — this would never have lent itself to my being a leader in the movement there.
I did not go there with the idea of ever staying, in the first place. I certainly did not feel any bitterness in terms of being displaced. I think, in all honesty, I ought to say a couple of things. One, as I told you, I went there to stay six weeks to do the first project, which would take a month and then two weeks to clean it up. I was importuned to stay to carry on because they had nobody else to carry on. They were looking for a man and a minister. I did succeed in orienting or, at least, in directing them to the first man who came there, which was the Reverend John Tilly, who I had known over a long period of years and who had been credited with — whether true or not — having led a very successful voter registration drive in Baltimore with the NAACP.
Britton:
Everybody I talk to takes credit for that, by the way.
Baker:
Yes, I know. Credit gets spread around very heavily. Anyhow, this became symbolic of what could be done, and it was I who first suggested him as a possibility. After there had been no action on the part of the SCLC leadership to really contact him and to talk with him — because, basically, of this question of nobody able to move except Dr. King; and he was no doubt {UNCLEAR} — and so we finally had Reverend Mr. Tilly to come to New York and Stanley and I talked with him. He seemed interested.Then, subsequent to that, he was asked to come to Atlanta to a board meeting. So, I was instrumental in getting him there. I only stayed afterwards because people don't develop certain information or certain organizing capacities out of the blue. So, I stayed as a supporter for his efforts.
Then, he got disillusioned. I won't say disillusioned; maybe a combination of factors because he was there on a part-time basis because he didn't want to give up the church connection and whatever else developed. Then came a kind of ironic turn at the board meeting in Montgomery when they had no money, practically, and he had left. They asked me to serve as the director with a cut in whatever little salary I was getting, which is not new to me. You see, having not a great deal of personal ambition, to me it was more important to go ahead. I may as well play the supporting role there as anywhere else. So I stayed on.
I was the first one to speak to Wyatt. I had the Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker and the Reverend George Lawrence of New York, who I had known over a period of years, to come to my house to dinner in New York. I broached the subject to Reverend Mr. Walker and his wife then as to his coming into the organization. I had no illusions abut how far I could get in the organization.
I've heard of number of things. I even heard something to the effect that I hated Martin, coming out of his family, as I understand. I mean, nobody has ever confronted me with it; I mean, no direct confrontation. But, I think this stems from the fact that I did not have the kind of awe for the charismatic role that he had gained, or was playing, that some people had, you see?Martin wasn't, basically, the kind of person — certainly at the stage that I knew him closest — wasn't the kind of person you could engage in dialogue with, certainly, if the dialogue questioned the almost exclusive rightness of his position. And I had no such awe and would raise questions that I considered fundamental to both the concept of organization and the rights of people involved in an organization — such things as differentials in salaries based on non-objective standards, but on subjective relationships and ideological differences; in terms of whether or not you really ought to have a leader-centered movement or group-centered leadership, you know.
I don't know whether this comes clear to you. What I mean by that is that instead of trying to develop people around a leader, the thrust, in my direction, should be that the first consideration is to try to develop leadership out of the group and to spread the leadership roles so that you develop — in other words, you're organizing people to be self-sufficient rather than to be dependent upon the charismatic leader, or the Moses-type leader. And I don't mean Bob Moses-type. I mean the ancient type.
Britton:
The biblical Moses type.
Baker:
The biblical Moses, yeah. When I left, however, I knew that the thrust was going to continue to be in the direction of sporadic, I called it, and demonstrative action, you see. This I have never been able to quite cope with. In the first place, I have questions about the long-range effectiveness of big demonstrations and what you get from them. I've heard it quoted in press and on platform that out of Selma came —what was it?
Britton:
The Voting Rights Act?
Baker:
Voting Rights Act. And out of Birmingham came something else. Now, you see, I don't believe this. I don't believe it just comes out of that, as such. Even if it did, I'd come back with the question, so what do you have? Because the implementation of all the laws is the crux of the effectiveness of them. As you well know, we had some very fine laws passed prior to the birth of either of us.
Britton:
Right, the Reconstruction period.
Baker:
Reconstruction period. They died as a result of the lack of implementation. Even the recent laws that have been passed are only as valuable as the people you have alerted and capable of using their combined power to see that they are implemented.
Britton:
One other thing on SCLC proper. Now, I think I would like to direct you to SNCC for a minute, and that is, you say that you did not have this awe of Dr. King and many of the kids in SNCC who lived in Atlanta didn't either. But people on the outside did? How did you truly feel about him and how did you assess his leadership potential and capacity.
Baker:
Well, that is difficult question for me. I think I accepted the fact that he was there in the role of having been pronounced a great leader as a result of the Montgomery situation and being acclaimed, periodically and repeatedly, by the nation and the world as a great leader. I accepted that this could have some symbolic value. I mean, to be the symbol, there was some value. But I've never been able to feel the symbolic value can be — in other words, I've never been able to take this symbolic value to displace the need for knowledgeable leadership. So, how did I accept Martin? I accepted the role that he had been projected in as a fact of life. This is my attitude. There it was. If it could be useful, you hoped that it might reach its fullest potential out of experience. This was my hope as far as he was concerned.You see, I've never felt it necessary for any one person to embody all that's needed in a leadership for a group of people. This comes back, again, to my old cliche about a leader-centered group as over against a group-centered leadership. The group comes first in my mind. So, as far as Martin was concerned, as far as anybody else is concerned, they were only a part of a whole. And the most important thing was, and still is in my mind, is to develop people to the point that they don't need the strong, savior-type leader. So I don't know whether this answers you at all. You may pinpoint it a little. I don't mind. But, what else would you ask there?
Britton:
I get the idea that you feel that he was not the greatest leader during the years that you were associated with him and that he had not reached that potential that he may have been able to reach. Is that a correct interpretation?
Baker:
Yes, I don't attribute to him the leadership powers and credit to him that achievement that some people credit, in terms of the civil rights movement. 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. The only discrediting factor would be if this contradicts his own assessment of who made whom. And this, no doubt, may have at points been part of whatever lack of comfort he may have found in any association with me. You see, this is my basic belief and I have no capacity for worshipping the leader because I know it's not a healthy thing. There is no one person who can provide the needs, I mean, the leadership needs of a movement.
Britton:
I see. I got what you mean. Now, while you were at SCLC, there developed SNCC. Now, I've heard all kinds of versions of how [the] Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was started and why, and what happened in Raleigh. You were there —
Baker:
Maybe you ought to tell me some of these versions.
Britton:
Well, there's the version, first of all, that SNCC was started at the momentum of SCLC and Wyatt Walker. There's the version that SNCC had nothing whatsoever to do with SCLC, and that these kids just happened to be there and they went off to themselves and started SNCC. So, you were there, and I understand that you are the grande dame of SNCC. Could you tell us the correct version of how SNCC came into being?
Baker:
Well, I think the nearest thing to being correct would be that, number one, the sit-ins started. Nobody started them. None of the great leadership had anything to do with the sit-ins starting, as you know. The nearest thing to any leadership would be whoever that doctor was in Greensboro with who there three or four kids had talked.They sat-in, and history will record that it spread like wildfire. I think it spread, to such an extent, because of, you know, just the young enthusiasm and the [mission/tension?]; a whole lot of factors. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction among the young that hadn't been articulated with the older leadership. Part of the spread was that my sister would call her brother at a given college and ask why aren't you doing it. So, I saw it taking place.
My old business of the need for organization comes in and I saw that there was not even communication between the different groups that were springing up. I knew North Carolina quite well. In fact, I knew the South in terms of personalities and a lot of things because I traveled for NAACP. So I suggested that there was a need to bring together the young people who had emerged in the sit-ins for the purpose of developing some basis, at least, for communication, which was the first hope, and, hopefully, a basis for coordination of activities.
I got the okay for doing this from SCLC, not in terms of their looking upon it as a big, major project, but they didn't object. So I went to Raleigh.
First, I wired A&T College and Bennett College. I was thinking of these as sites for the meeting. I found out I couldn't have it there for reasons; I know Bennett College had something coming up that they couldn't displace the use of their building for, couldn't change. So, I went to Raleigh and got an agreement first with the student leadership there in Raleigh for having this meeting, and then getting Shaw University to agree to permit it to be held there, and worked out with the officials down there the basis on which we could come. SCLC was to pay for the food of those who came. The original concept was a leadership conference of 100 or 125.
Britton:
Was that to be a SCLC meeting at which these kids would attend?
Baker:
No.
Britton:
Just a meeting for the kids?
Baker:
It was. I had pushed for a meeting for the kids at which they would decide whether to become, I mean, whether they wanted to be a coordinated body or whether they still wanted to just continue to be out there, each on his own. But, at least, my minimum consideration was that certainly out of it should come some machinery for communication, for continued communication, and, coordination.So I sent out a very mild sort of call— one-sheet thing — calling for students to come on a given date or to elicit their interest in it, signed by myself and Martin — which I signed, of course. To, first, those who had emerged in leadership roles that had been publicized — like Charlie Jones up in Charlotte and a couple of others whom I knew — then, to student organizations in different colleges from which there had been no evidence of sit-ins, but maybe subsequently developed, and whatever resources I had for reaching people.
I said we sent out this little call with the idea of getting 100 or 120. We began to allocate the number of representatives that could come from different areas on the basis of the relative strength as we saw it. Unfortunately, it was all my judgment, maybe. So just as the sit-ins had skyrocketed or escalated without rhyme or reason, so the response to the concept of a conference escalated beyond our expectations.
I think there were [?]9 colleges and universities north of the Mason-Dixon line that wanted to come, which meant there was the whole business of the North and {UNCLEAR} leadership. Then from the South it was a larger number {UNCLEAR}, of course, and grown-ups. So, we ended up with practically 300 people, and you could not have a real leadership training conference in that setting. So, it became a sort of "mountain top experience."
I had thought also to get Jim Lawson as the keynote speaker because, number one, I thought Jim Lawson was —the Reverend James Lawson — I knew he was, in terms of historical devotion to and knowledge of the nonviolent concept, he was a peer. We got him to speak.
And as I recall, there was a little bit of questioning of me by the SCLC executive committee, or whatever committee was relating to the issue at all, as to — I think they wanted SCLC projected more, and I insisted that I felt Jim was a better person. They, at one stage, said something about my doing it, and I have often wondered whether it was because I was on my way out by that stage, and they knew it, or whether it was in deference to their desire to have, really, a SCLC projection.
But, anyway. I prevailed, because Jim had relationships with the students in Nashville. He had done an excellent job. If you recall, the Nashville students were more fundamentally grounded in the nonviolent concepts and philosophy. So, that prevailed. Then, of course, we had the big mass meeting at which Dr. King spoke, and so forth and so on.
Now, the first step that we took at least, perhaps, the step that I took as far as the conference was concerned, was to prevent the press from attending the sessions at which kids were trying to hammer out policy. I remember Claude Sitton [New York Times] being one of the person; that was the first time I met him. You see, I've never had any special inclination to being publicized and I also knew that you could not organize in the public press. You might get a lot of limelight, but you really couldn't organize. So, the press was limited to a certain number of sessions. So, maybe you might like to ask a couple of questions about what happened in Raleigh.
Britton:
Yeah, well, just a general question. Well, let me ask this question. Where or how as the decision arrived at to make the Student Nonviolent Committee a reality and then move to Atlanta rather than some other place? How was Atlanta chosen?
Baker:
Well, out of this great gathering of young people who were full of dreams of a real movement, we were gathered there and we went through processes of various types of discussion. One of the first discussions, I think, that had some decisiveness about it was the question of whether the northern students could meet with the southern students in debating roles of what the movement would be. There was a high degree of protectiveness on part of the southern students, which was natural since the movement had started with them. So the decision was reached that the northern students would meet separately — and there was some discussion as to what their roles might be — and that the southern students would meet and that the leadership for the South had to be a southern leadership. That was the first major decision.So, they met separately and then they had dialogue afterwards. The decision was finalized that the northern students could not become a part of whatever organizational machinery that was set up, that theirs was a supportive role. We had a good deal of sharp dialogue on that and it became soul searching for some, you see, because it wasn't a question of color as much as it was a question of retaining the character of the southern-based movement.
I think it became evident to some of the youngsters for the first time that the northern students who came were coming from Yale, and from Harvard, from Brown, from City College [of New York], and so forth — Chicago University. They were much more articulate in terms of certain social philosophies than the southern students who had come, primarily with a rather simple philosophical orientation, namely of the Christian, nonviolent approach. And they had demonstrated, however, their capacity for suffering the confrontation to a degree that the northern students had not. So I think it worked out quite well in terms of separating the two.
Britton:
What was the concept as to how SNCC was to be set up in the beginning? I've heard the story that it was setup merely as a coordinating agency to channel money to the various areas, but then, suddenly, it became staff oriented and professional oriented.
Baker:
Well, I think before we get to that, maybe we ought to touch upon what did take place there in Raleigh a little more. Wyatt was coming in as the head of SCLC. SCLC leadership was interested in whatever emerged from the conference becoming an arm of SCLC. In the first place, it was more interested in trying to push for a structured result out of this meeting than I was. I was against tying to force the kids to come to a structure just because they were there. To me, it was a bad organization. Why should they, in three days, arrive at a point it had taken SCLC three years to arrive at, or any other group? So, I looked upon it as the beginning of a student-structured movement.So, there was a good deal of confrontation with some of us within the adult SCLC leadership as to what would come out of this meeting. I held for the position that I told you I advocated, namely, to try to get them at least to the point where they would have a continuations committee that could work out a much more fundamental, structured program if this was what they seemed to want.
There were other organization people there, like CORE people. I think Len Holt was there, at that time, representing the southern efforts of CORE, and some other people from CORE. I think whatever organizations were there were concerned about this great force and not wanting to lose it. So what happened was that in the process of discussion, I think it became a little too obvious that certain adults were trying to exercise too much influence on decision-making. And there was revolt in the students.
For instance, there was definite effort made to get the students to decide to become an arm of SCLC. But the students — some began to fight it. It became such a hot issue that this was on the first part of the agenda of decision-issues to be decided. We had met Friday night, we met all day Saturday, and, I think, this was Sunday morning, or Saturday night, I forget which, you know, that we had reached this point. It became such a hot issue that you had to turn the agenda upside down and deal with some other issues beforehand.
First, they had to stop and pray and sing some, you know, because this was the peaceful movement, you know. Jim Lawson, with his calm, was trying to get them to sing and pray. So they finally, then, came back to the issue of becoming an arm of SCLC. They decided not to become an arm of the SCLC, but to retain an independence of their own, or seek to retain an independence, and they would cooperate with SCLC as with other organizations, and so forth and so on; like that. This was the first decision in terms of how they would go.
They decided that there would be a continuations committee, which was composed of, I think, about two representatives from each state — you had these state caucuses out of which they chose their state representatives — and that we'd meet the next month, which was May. And then it was decided further to meet every month in Atlanta for the summer, and, hopefully by the fall to have worked out a proposal for a much more permanent arrangement.
I think the reasons they came to Atlanta to meet were tied up with the fact that Atlanta was centrally located to some of the stronger student units, like what had emerged in Atlanta, although the Atlanta student leadership had a little set-back at Raleigh. I'll tell you about that. But, you had Nashville. You had — what's the other place in Tennessee?
Britton:
Knoxville?
Baker:
No, Knoxville wasn't so important.
Britton:
Memphis?
Baker:
No, you had some from Memphis; but Nashville and, you know — the next thing there. Yeah, you know, Chattanooga. And, of course, Virginia and South Carolina. You had a great deal of activity around Orangeburg and out of Columbia. Chuck McDew was in that leadership. So, then you had the problem of no mechanics for getting anything done. I think they reckoned with the fact that whatever had happened had come out of the effort there in Atlanta, and I was going to be there awhile. So, I think this was part of the decision to use Atlanta as the base for trying to work out these further steps.Subsequently, they agreed to invite representatives from different organizations to sit in on their discussions. So, during the summer, decisions were made in the direction of the students setting up an office in Atlanta. Jane Stembridge, a young white girl who was then a student at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, said she would be available to work, you know, just for survival money. I was still with SCLC. So our first move was to get permission for them to work out of the SCLC office.
That developed and some changes had to be made there. So, I got Mr. Alexander to rent us the little room in back of what was the SCLC offices. Then when Martin and Wyatt began to say they were going to move in there, then they decided we couldn't use that room. They wanted that room. So we then got Mr. Alexander to give us a little cubbyhole across the street, and we got him to cut the rent down by $20 a month , I believe. Perhaps it was what it was worth, I don't know. But, it wasn't what he was asking. So, the office was set up there.
Jane came down. The Fourth of July that year, she and I spend that whole day writing up the thing that the kids presented to the platform committee of the Democratic Convention in San Francisco, I believe; or in California, at that time, which became the basis for a similar presentation in Chicago, I believe, for the Republican Convention.
The decision had been made that two people would go to the convention and be joined by one who was already based there. I forgot who was based in California, but Diane Nash was based in Chicago. So, the two people who went were Bernard Lee and Marion Barry. And they went all the way by train — coach — from Atlanta to California. So, this was the state of affairs.
Now, the decision had also been reached in the process of these summer meetings that the adults would be fund-raising for the students; they were supposed to help provide funds for them. The students would only concern themselves with enough money to sort of keep things going. But this, of course, didn't work out quite so well. Especially as they more and more became independently oriented.
This is how we [came] out of Raleigh to Atlanta, because there was a need for — they elected first a temporary continuations committee and called themselves the Temporary Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And out of the subsequent meetings in Atlanta, which were attended very well by the youngsters — we'd come and try to deal with the issues — they finalized their position for a permanent group and had a meeting in Atlanta in October of '60. Out of that came the question of staff, and they began to work there.
Britton:
What was this setback the Atlanta group suffered?
Baker:
Oh yeah! That was just a nice little psychological thing, I suppose. You know, the Atlanta group, as you recall, emerged as a sort of an elite student group with this dramatic Appeal For Human Rights. They came to Raleigh, I guess, with something of the Atlanta syndrome and came in great style, I gather. They had stacks and stacks of this appeal — copies of the appeal — which, as you know, had received a tremendous amount of adulation and approval and praise, etc., etc., in Atlanta.But at Raleigh, the activist kids who had come through more of a — you see, Atlanta, in April of '60, hadn't reached any points of real action, you remember. These other kids had been pushed off of stools, and so forth, and beaten a bit, and this thing just didn't touch them, you see? So, the Atlanta group wasn't an important group. This was sort of a psychological setback for them.
Britton:
Was it true that there was always sort of a rivalry between — even when SNCC was formed — between the Nashville group, the Atlanta group and the Howard group?
Baker:
Well, I think this would be germane to the rivalries that have existed over a long period of time in terms of the different colleges and their sense, I guess what you might call sort of their sense of their own importance. And there was. In the first place, Howard's group became something of a target because out of the Howard group you had a higher degree of articulation. You see, one of the things that has to be reckoned with is the fact that the southern colleges and the southern schools had not really developed young leadership in terms of capacity to articulate other than in rather limited means; I mean in limited terms. I don't know whether you follow me there.
Britton:
I see what you mean.
Baker:
They could do a great deal of oratory. But when it came to a question of dialogue and debate, of discussions on the issues — now the debate, they could be trained to debate something that they learned. But, as you know, the South did not go in for discussion of ideas and dialogue.But out of Howard, the Howard group had the combined sophistication of kids coming from certain areas; like Stokely had had his exposure, I'm sure, to the Young Socialist League, the Young Communist League, and so forth, in New York ever since he was in junior high school. Now he was at Howard. Ed Brown and others, they came with a certain amount of capacity to articulate and to defend positions, to even advance ideas, whereas the southern kids were sort of limited with the concept, you know, we're fighting against segregated lunch counters, and so forth and so on.
In fact, some of them were not even in position to know how to put a motion — just simple things like this — which is the fault of a system that does not develop that kind of leadership.
In New York City, for instance, especially in the better areas, by the time a kid — certain kids, especially the white, middle-class Jewish kids who come out of an activist background — by the time they reach junior high school, they have gone through a great deal of organizational experience. The first organizational experience these kids had was when they got involved in the sit-ins — not this routine business of stuff at school where they elected a captain of a basketball team, or something like this.
One of the things that amazed me in that period I went back [to the South] was that the pattern of school participation and of articulation on ideas seemed to me to have deteriorated instead of to have improving in the southern schools. I was judging it on the basis of the kind of participation that we went in for in my day. But, anyhow, that obtained. And I think you had this rivalry 'cause Nashville really had had greater training and orientation in depth in terms of the nonviolent philosophy. They, I think were the only group that had a consistent pattern of workshops. And, as I said, Jim Lawon was responsible for that to a large extent. He was supported by the Reverends C.T. Vivian and Kelly Miller Smith. But, you see, these men were on a different beam.
Britton:
All brilliant.
Baker:
And they were brilliant. And they dealt with ideas much more than many of the other ministers who had only the one idea.
Britton:
Was there an impassioned debate also over the way SNCC was to be structured? I mean, after it really got started, was there not a group out of Nashville, perhaps, that did not want a highly structured organization, almost anarchistic — everybody does their own thing? And was there not another group that wanted a tightly structured organization with a good leadership?
Baker:
I don't think that became as much of an issue until we got involved with the concept of political action. In the beginning, I think whatever there was of stress and strain was based, to a large extent, upon, number one, something of an over-aggressive tendency, or what was interpreted as an over-aggressiveness, on the part of some of the students, say, from Howard, or students who had had much more exposure — largely from Howard, and to some extent, North Carolina — as over against the students who came from the other schools. I think that was something of a strain.I think another possible basis for strain was just a natural thing between strong leaders, you see? You must remember Charles Jones had emerged in Charlotte as "the" leader. He had, perhaps, been ordained from years back to be a leader. You know how these things developed. Lonnie King had emerged as "the" leader in Atlanta, and others had emerged as "the" leader. They, unfortunately, had the example of the elders who were oriented in the direction of the strong leader, you know, "the" leader. I think these were the forces that were at play in terms of stresses in the beginning.
Britton:
Who did finally emerge as the strong man of SNCC after all these leaders got together and thumped heads?
Baker:
At the beginning there was no strongman. They fought that concept by developing what they called a rotating chairmanship. The first chairman of SNCC was Marion Barry, and I think this came out of, first, a deference to the strength of the Nashville movement, and also, maybe, it might have been something of a reaction against the strong leader type because Marion developed from a long way back. So, when they met in October of that year, I think he was elected again as the chairman. We began then to get into areas of differences of programmatic emphasis, because by October of '60, the whole sit-in movement had gone a long way in terms of lunch counters. And we began to raise questions as to just how much does this net you and begun to talk in terms of expanding.Then, I think in the fall — was it the fall of that year that the Interstate Commerce decision [regarding ending segregation in inter-state travel such as long-distance busses] came down? So, we began to spread. And also, the influence of the Howard students and the National Student Association leadership — Tim Jenkins was the vice president in charge of national affairs for the NSA, and he had come down. He had had some concept of this whole business of political action and voter registration.
And the, in protesting to the Department of Justice, some of the questions that arose out of the earlier activity — and, I think Bobby Kennedy raised the question with them of how much more effective they would be with political action. He had, no doubt, had in mind building a greater degree of political strength, you know, with the voter registration actions that were taking place, for the next election of his brother. So, what emerged then as a final confrontation, not a final, but the most pointed confrontation was on the question of voter registration over as against pure nonviolent direct action.
You see, Bob Moses came down the summer of '60. He came because he had promised that he was going to do some volunteer work for SCLC. But there had been no advance notice to me about his coming and no preparation on the part of the powers that be for using him. So, what he did was to relate to Jane Stembridge and to me in terms of the SNCC program. Then, he was sent into Alabama and to Mississippi and to Louisiana to try to get representation from these areas at the October conference. In the process of his swing-around, one of the persons to whom he had been recommended out of my previous experience was Amzie Moore down in Cleveland, Mississippi, in that Delta area — Amzie, even then, had the concept of great need for developing voter strength and resistance to being force out of Mississippi.
So, on the strength of his contact there he was then invited back. He was committed to have to teach that winter, but he was invited to come to McComb, Mississippi, by the head of the McComb Mississippi NAACP. He started there with a voter registration effort and a voter registration school, and out of it came such things as the confrontation he and John — what's John's name — had in Amite County.
Britton:
John Lewis?
Baker:
No! This chap came out of Nashville. The case that came out of Amite County is his case; the first confrontation of the registrar business. I think the registrar cracked him across the head with a pistol. So, the SNCC syndrome started there in '61, he came immediately and went into Mississippi. By that time we had had other discussions on the whole question of going into political action, not just voter registration, but political involvement had action. So, out of —it must have been in '62, I guess, we had the debate up at — we had a workshop or, at least, a staff meeting, or whatever it is you have, up at Highlander, and it got so bitter that there was a threat to develop two different organizations.Diane Nash and Marion Barry and those who had come out of the deeply rooted nonviolent, direct action orientation, I think, were a bit fearful for a number of reasons and skeptical of the advocates of political action. I think one of the reasons that they, perhaps, were defensive was that the political actionists had developed a much more well congealed plan and they were prepared to argue their position. Tim Jenkins was one of those persons and he had then developed a relationship with Charlie Jones, and with Charles Sherrod, to some extent, but Charlie Jones, Chuck McDew.
This was the old business of groups that are better prepared to advocate their position sometimes engendering a defensives on the part of those who are less prepared. So, those who are on the defensive, then, take the step to try to decide to resolve the conflict by saying, "Well, let's have two organizations." It was one of the few times, I suppose, that I had anything to say in terms of that type of discussion. I usually tried to present whatever participation I had in terms of questions and try to get people to reach certain decisions by questioning some of the things themselves.
But, in this instance, I made a little plea against splitting, pointing out the history of organizations among black people and the multiplicity of organizations and the lack of effectiveness as a result of this, to the extent that they decided against it. But, the old strains were there. One person — one of the adults that was there — was very much upset because she said that I had kept them from doing what they wanted to do. Anyhow —
Britton:
Incidentally, do you have any idea where Bob Moses is now?
Baker:
No. I don't.
Britton:
I have heard people say, even his enemies say, that James Forman was a top-flight administrator and a good organizer — a brilliant organizer and a brilliant administrator. Do you agree with that assessment? Is he the guy who kept SNCC together?
Baker:
He is the guy who made it into an organization in many ways, because Forman had a great deal of know-how when he came. And he has a sensitivity — and perhaps it was even more accentuated then because the forces of life hadn't done a lot of things to him — but he had a sensitivity about people that almost amounted to his playing a father role or providing the father image for the youngsters who were coming in.So, basically, he was the guy who really molded it into a sort of a fighting force, I think, as an organization. The influence he had on these youngsters and his know-how helped to translate their drive in certain directions into a concrete force.
Even, say, Bob Moses and his role in Mississippi benefited by the fact that you had a Jim Forman who was philosophically developed enough to recognize something that even some of us older people never accepted: namely, that going to people getting money was a form of providing them with an opportunity to develop, you see, because many of us had some qualms. I've never developed an ease about getting money. But Jim took the position that it was a political thing, and this was their opportunity. He wasn't begging anybody. He was really giving them an opportunity. It was out of that context that we began to develop the kind of relationships out of which money flowed.
Also, he was very good at providing the youngsters with a feeling of there was somebody that did know. They felt he was young enough for them to relate, and yet, at the same time to combine that sense of comradeship with a father image-type relationship.
Britton:
Do you have any opinion as to the turns in directions or the different levels which SNCC has developed up to its present from? Have you formed any opinions about why it happened and the goodness or badness of it happening?
Baker:
What in particular would you like to deal with first?
Britton:
Well, we've dealt, basically, with the young SNCC. Now, I'm speaking of, well, first, when they really began to take aggressive political action as to the Atlantic City challenge. That's one level. Then, at the next level, after they were frustrated there, they turned more and more to what might be called a sort of nationalism at least, that was called "black power."
Baker:
Not quite that early, though.
Britton:
Right! Then, they got to the black power stage. So, I was just interested in knowing your opinion of the validity of these steps, and perhaps you could explain why they happened.
Baker:
Well, I'm not sure I can, but at least we can try a bit to offer a few observations. We started out at some point by saying that SNCC, in its early stages, began to face up to the need for political participation as well as voter registration. So, in the first thrust it made in electing to go into the hardcore, Black-belt areas, this also carried with it a conviction that had come out of our dialogue of developing people; organizing them for their own leadership rather than getting them mobilized to be dependent upon some extraneous, or outside, or imported leadership. This became the basis of its philosophy for really trying to organize people.Also, in the dialogue that ensued about this, those who were fearful of losing the nonviolent, direct action technique were brought to realize that the moment you went in to organize people on the basis that they were talking about — politically — it produced a confrontation with the power structure and the next step was the use of mass demonstration and reaction to the resistance by a confrontation through mass demonstration or mass action.
So, you had that in Albany. You had it first in Selma [in 1963]. Then, out of Mississippi, the tremendous resistances that developed led us into a further evaluation of political action, which was to say that a great part of why we were having the difficulty in Mississippi, etc. and etc., was that the rest of the country had tacitly agreed to the patterns of racial repression that had existed in the South. So, how do you involve the rest of the country? There were two steps taken, if we traced it. This wasn't all; I mean, they just didn't all arrive at this. Fortunately, there were people who helped them arrive at it.
Howard Zinn was a good person in terms of raising the question of the responsibility of the Federal Government. So, as you can see, they began to address themselves to the federal government for remedial actions. Then, there was the other concept that — I hope I'm not losing it — there was the other thing of involving the rest of the country.
The Mississippi Summer was a conscious political effort based on the rather simple premise that when Ted Jones, the black boy, whoever he is in Mississippi got killed, he was just a black boy who got killed or who got beaten up. A lot of these black kids who had gone down to work had already gotten beat up, and so forth — like Stokely, like Ivanhoe [Donaldson], like Charles Sherrod and like others. But if the son of the Congressman from California was beaten up, it made a difference. See, by that time there was pressure on the part of the white students to be involved. I mean, they had come down. Some had given up schooling to come and join the SNCC group, you see, on a small scale — a limited scale.
But, the conscious effort to create the Mississippi Summer with the involvement of hundreds of white students from the North was predicated upon the idea that the rest of the country had a responsibility for what was happening in Mississippi and the South. And the best way to confront the rest of the country was to involve the white students, the sons of the leadership and the power structure, and so forth. So, this is why Mississippi Summer.
This paid off, as you know, in terms of projecting the program in a way that it had never been projected before.
Out of the experiences and resistance they had in Mississippi — for instance, just a simple effort to register and vote — developed them into the thinking of a much more massive effort which was first tried out with the freedom vote, I believe, in '63 when the Rev. Ed King of Tougaloo and Dr. Aaron Henry were projected —Dr. Henry as governor, I believe, and Ed King as lieutenant governor — with what was called a mock election. They tried to set up in barber shops, etc., and so forth, a place where people could register.
What was this doing? This was giving the lie to the old idea that a great deal of the reason why Negroes weren't registering was because they weren't interested in registering. But they came in thousands and they collected — I've forgotten whether it was 80,000, or whatever it was, registrations in this mock election. So this also produced other confrontations. So it just led them into, more and more, a realization of how limited the results were from the efforts.
See, step by step they made certain efforts. They tried to work within the system. They tried to go through the channel of voter registration, which ought to have been a very easy road, you know, but they got all kinds of physical reprisals as a result of it. So, they were driven more and more into a realization that something different had to take place.
We come then to the close of '64, the summer of '64, and you have a lot of factors that would enter into their internal evaluations of what they had done. Among them was the fact that these three kids got down there. And it is said by many — I've never heard Bob Moses say it himself — but he had felt, to a large extent, that he was responsible for these murders by being the initiator of the program to bring the people in.
In the process of the summer, the close confrontation between the white, articulate, ideologically assured students from the North with the black students and the black youngsters who hadn't even been to school was too much of a close confrontation to not develop certain frictions. This began to express itself in such things as a move against structure.
I don't know whether you remember the "freedom highs," the alluding to a certain group of people with the "freedom high" forces in SNCC. This became, almost, sort of an anti-Jim Forman-type thing in some respects because it became the question — what had happened to some extent was the concept of the right of people to participate in the decisions that affect their lives, which was a strong concept that had developed in SNCC, began to be translated into the idea that each person working had a right to decide what ought to be done. So you began to do your thing. They struck out at structure and form as being the restraining influence against the individual doing his thing.
Part of it, I think, sprang from the frustrations of having given so much and having had so much faith without recognizing — having had faith that the democratic process would provide certain types of things and it didn't. Then they began to sort of eat on each other, I think. This is what I think.
Now, this brings us, I think, to the black power period. Before that, the next step is the question of, say, the transfer from the Mississippi Summer and the confrontation at Atlantic City into a different kind of independent — as they thought of it — political organizing. Those who went to Atlantic City, I guess what they expected varied to a large degree. I, personally, couldn't see how anyone could have expected that they were going to get what they went for; that there would be faith in getting it. But, I think some people really believed that by the honest confrontation and the documentation that they presented, they were going to be seated.
Certainly, they expected that the people who made up the convention would have a chance to deal with it. When this was prevented, there developed certain other kinds of reaction to the whole democratic process. Some of the people who had been party to organizing, say, the Mississippi challenge also began to have, maybe, some questions about whether that was the best way — you know, to organize to try to do it with a national confrontation or whether you ought to go into a county and try to develop or sort of take over the court house and other paces, you see? Then you had Lowndes County [AL].
In the process of all this, other factors in the total climate of not only the country, but the world — the evolvement of nationalism and liberation from colonialism on the part of a lot of black countries. In the ghetto areas you had a resurgence of nationalism, like the coming out of Malcolm X. You see the projection of Malcolm X and the question of the concept that the man is never going to let you get in on his thing, your only answer is going to be to develop your own power. And that got into the black power. I think this was part of getting into the black power thing.
So, my rationalization for it is that the kids tried the established methods. And they tried that the expense of their lives, which is much different from the accommodating role to trying that had previously been used; you know, of "Well, you try and you try to go through the courts, and then you're willing to wait another 50 years, for the petitioning, and you're willing to wait." But they were neither willing to wait — and they had paid a high price.
So, they began to look for other answers. So, I think it's sort of a normal result of certain frustrations, the developing climate of alienation of the young from the Establishment and the additional impact on black youngsters of the rising independence of black people in Africa and other parts of the world.
Britton:
Is it possible that because the kids spent so much time responding to the reactions to black power by the press, they ended up isolating themselves by the rhetoric that they used?
Baker:
I think they got caught in their own rhetoric. Even this business of the press, I think, has its explanation. It's not just these kids. To me, it's a part of our system which says that success is registered in terms of, if not money, then how much prestige and how much recognition you have. That's one.Then the elders before them in movement, and certainly from the Montgomery movement on, and part of the King image is the great use of the press; almost a reliance on the press to tell the story. So these youngsters, with their own need for recognition, began to respond to the press. And, also, their bitterness at having been unable to get what they were out to get with the steps they took, and the personal suffering that they had had, they became embittered, I'm sure, with the press.
Like Stokely began to use the term "honky." It was a striking back. I think it's true that the rhetoric caught them because what happened was people began — many of them, maybe, hadn't developed as much of a rationale for position as Stokely because I've seen him make some very profound development from this whole concept of black power. I've seen him do it at a level that there was nothing irritating about it for anybody who is willing to have sense enough to deal with the facts at all.
But, this began to be taken up, you see, by youngsters who had not gone through any experiences or any steps of thinking, and it did become a slogan, much more of a slogan, and the rhetoric was far in advance of the organization for achieving that which you say you're out to achieve.
Britton:
What position did this put Forman in as the old man of SNCC? He's still the old man of SNCC. If you know, does he feel a repudiation by this, or is he still more or less the power behind SNCC?
Baker:
No, there is no real power behind SNCC, I don't think, now.As far as Forman is concerned, I don't think he felt a repudiation because, to a large extent, even though he did not initiate the verbiage surrounding black power, he is very much still of the belief that the only answer is a more revolutionary approach. You see, this is what people have been driven to, even an older person like me who has been around all these years. I find myself in the position where, for instance, I could not react very favorably to, as an example, the call that was issued for this meeting, for this mobilization of Solidarity Day today, the first one that was issued by Bayard Rustin.
Now this doesn't touch me, see, 'cause the things that are being asked for and the method for dealing with the lack of response on the part of power structure leaves me cold. I would think it would leave people who are closest to the activist movement, the younger people, even more chilled, you see. So, I don't think it's unnatural for them to feel the need for the more revolutionary method. And then, when you look at history —
Britton:
So, really, I guess Bayard Rustin is really one of the few people who's still up there talking about coalition politics.
Baker:
Yes. You see, because I think of the SNCC position that was articulated by Stokely repeatedly, and others, that how can you have a coalition? First, you've got to have something to coalesce with, and you've got to coalesce from a position of power, not just for the sake of saying, "We're together."I mean, take the first question of with whom can you coalesce. The logical groups for black masses to coalesce with would be the impoverished white, the misrepresented and impoverished Indians, or the non-represented and impoverished Indians, the alienated Mexican-Americans. These are the natural allies in my book. But there is no natural alliance between the impoverished poor and Walter Reuther, per se.
Now, this is, to me, a regrettable thing because, basically, the labor movement was meeting the need of the non-powerful. When labor was not organized, it was non-powerful. But I'm afraid it succumbed, to a large extent, to the failures of what I call the American weakness of being recognized and of having arrived and taking on the characteristics and the values even, of the foe. And so what we have now is what we have.
Britton:
Miss Baker, when did you become involved on the staff of SCEF, Southern Conference Educational Fund, the way you are now?
Baker:
Well, I became a member of the staff, I guess, about five years ago. I can do it a little better by recounting what happened when I left SCLC. I took two years, two school years, working with the National Student YWCA in Atlanta at the regional office in a special human relations program. So, that meant '61 - '62. I probably joined the staff of SCEF sometime in '63 as a consultant. I had been asked before, but frankly I was still trying not to have too much of a staff relationship with anybody, largely because I guess I just reached the point of being weary of certain kinds of responsibility.So, I finally conceded on a special consultant basis which did not demand of me an established role as such. I'm still considered a special consultant although in terms of income — I elected not to receive income from them because, number one, that was, I think, this last fall, SCEF has launched a very good and ambitious program of attempting to reach poor whites and to deal with them in terms of their organizing against their oppressions. They have been able to attract a goodly number of very capable young white people to work and they didn't have but so much money. I just couldn't see my being subsidized even to the limited extent that I was when they could use that money for hiring some more active young people.
Britton:
All right: We know the role that NAACP has played, SNCC, SCLC. For the uninitiated who might pick up this tape later on, what is SCEF all about?
Baker:
Basically, SCEF is about the idea that white Southerners have to be concerned about what was happening to black southerners. It came out of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare which was really a very powerful thrust in its day, involving such personages as Mrs. Roosevelt, and other people of such standing, and Dr., who's the doctor — Dr. Graham, former president of the University of North Carolina.It had as its concern — it started out, at least, I think, with the concerns that were voiced by [President] Roosevelt in this Four Freedoms: freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from poverty, and whatever else — I've forgotten [Want, Fear, Worship, Speech]. It was to organize or to use the organizational strength of the various groups in the country to press for these things. Then, of course, it was accused of being a "Red" front. After that it reorganized into the Southern Conference Educational Fund, which took as its major thrust, still, the involvement of white people with the problems of discrimination against blacks.
Since then, it has now gotten into the more direct action-type of effort to reach poor whites to get them to organize on the theory that the same position that Stokely voiced: namely, you can't coalesce unless you have someone to coalesce with, and the natural allies of the poor whites are — they don't recognize their natural allies.
Britton:
How successful has SCEF been with this particular project?
Baker:
I think if you measure success by the increased amount of dedication on the part of young whites to work in that vein, it's been very successful. I have to stop a moment here to say that I use this as a yardstick because many of the young whites who became involved in movement since 1960 became involved with SNCC or because of SNCC. And there was a great deal of trauma experienced by them in respect to the position that SNCC finally took: that all the leadership in the black movement had to be black, and that whites needed to go out and organize whites. So there was a great deal of personal trauma experienced by some. So with that in view, and the fact that SCEF has been able to attract to it large numbers of capable young people, I think that's successful.It is also, to me, it's successful in that it has been able to sustain itself in spite of the kinds of pressures that inevitably are leveled against it. Recently, it has again and again been attacked in the press, say, in Kentucky, as a result of some of their efforts to organize up in the Appalachian area. They have been, again, accused of being Communists. So, being able to weather that, and to attract to it some people of status, I suppose, in the South, like some university professors, and to have some blacks and whites working together in Louisville to avoid the running out of whites when blacks move into a neighborhood, I think it's successful.
Britton:
Is the ultimate aim, then, to not only build up the strength of the poor white community, but is the aim to let these poor whites know that the purpose of all this is to eventually coalesce with Negroes?
Baker:
Yes, they have functioned from that premise. In fact, whatever discussion might have taken place as to the advisability of going into a poor white neighborhood without identifying yourself; having interest in dealing with this business of the natural allies, black and white poor being together in any discussion of that, the leadership has always taken the position that you shouldn't go in that way. There may have been some variations as far as the individuals because in the hard realities of reaching people you aren't always able to go and say, "Look, now, I believe in complete black and white things," see. But of all the organizations that I know, I know none that compares with SCEF in terms of its clarity of position and its doggedness of sticking to it in spite of difficulties and opposition.
Britton:
Frank and Anne Braden are still the head of that organization?
Baker:
Carl and Anne Braden.
Britton:
Carl, that's what I mean.
Baker:
Yeah, they are the heads and they succeeded Jim Dombrowski who came out of a more genteel orientation. He was a minister, has his doctorate in, I guess, theology from the Union Theological Seminary.
Britton:
What does a consultant do, like yourself? What do you do? The reason I ask is because I want to be a consultant one day and make some money.
Baker:
Well, I suggest that you not follow what I'm doing, especially if you want to make some money. You can forget it, just forget it.[pages run out here?????? Britton is middle of asking another questions]In my role as a consultant, I'm something of a sounding board, something of a bridge occasionally and, at points something of a comforter, which means that when crises or situations arise, maybe, as a result of certain types of confrontation in the community, in black-white relationships, they are able to call upon whatever resources I have, in terms of having been around for a long while and knowing people, to have something to offer in terms of, I suppose, helping them to accept what is and move from there.
Also, it means attending board meetings and helping, hopefully, the adult members of the board to understand what some of the board members might think are the radical or maybe too radical approaches of the young people who are now doing the work of SCEF. You see, one of the things that has obtained is that for a long time SCEF only had Jim Dombrowski. Then Carl and Anne began to work for him after they had their major difficulties there in Louisville which grew out of their buying a house for a [black] returned war veteran who couldn't buy one and selling it to him.
Carl was working with the Louisville Courier Journal, and Anne — I think they both had worked there. Both are newspaper people. So they began to travel for SCEF. Now it has a staff of some twenty-odd or more.
Britton:
Copyright © Ella Baker & John Britton. 1968
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