Ella Baker: The Democratic Alernative to the Lone, Charismatic Leader

Last updated on: March 9, 2015 at 3:41 pm by Kyle Roberts

Ella Baker: The Democratic Alernative to the Lone, Charismatic Leader 2015-03-09T15:41:26-05:00 Kyle Roberts

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My Missional Theology class is working through Cornel West and Christa Buschendorf’s recent book, Black Prophetic Fire. When you go looking for “missional theology” and “missional church” texts, under those subject headings, you find that most material is written by white males. Once you leave the moniker behind, you can find plenty of material that is deeply and thoroughly missional in nature (and much of it with even more passion and a sense of greater, more desperate concerns for justice!), even though it has no interest in the catchphrase. In any case, Black Prophetic Fire s a running dialogue between West and Buschendorf and offers up fascinating portraits of six significant African-American leaders in America who fought for civil rights of blacks and for justice in a variety of ways. The portrait of Ella Baker, a largely unsung hero of the civil rights movement who was a powerfully effective grassroots organizer in the civil rights movement, especially caught my attention. In a section in which the authors compare Baker’s style to Martin Luther King Jr’s, they point out the power of the long-view, grassroots-focused, humble approach of Baker’s. While not denigrating MLKJr., they raise the important point of social justice movements needing multiple styles of leaders to effect both short-term and long-term change:

Here’s a selection of that conversation:

West: When Ella Baker says that the movement made Martin, Martin didn’t make the movement, she is absolutely right, and so for me the greatness of Martin King has to do with the ways in which he used his charisma and used his rhetorical genius and used his courage and willingness to die alongside everyday people. The critique of Martin would be that the decision-making process in his organization was so top-down and so male-centered and hierarchical that one could have envisioned a larger and even more effective mass movement, especially when it came to issues of class, empire, gender and sexual orientation. When he hit economic justice for janitors and the poor, and when he hit issues of American imperialism in Vietnam, he would not have been just dangling all by himself if there had been more political education and cultivation among the people in the organization and the community. And Ella Baker…offered a deep democratic alternative to the model of the lone charismatic leader.

West goes on to describe Baker pulling out of the movement to take care of her niece, and the surprise that decision elicited among many colleagues. For her, West explains, caring for her niece was “part and parcel of her calling as someone who is of service”; her humility and sacrificial attitude drove her decisions regarding what responsibilities she needed to attend to.

Buschendorf: One wonders, of course, whether there is not a natural relation between the possibility of becoming such a charismatic leader and a certain degree of narcissism, so it is an even greater accomplishment of those figures who do not develop in terms of egocentricity, and yet are great leaders. Baker often criticized the mostly male cofighters she had to put up with. As she recalled, they took it for granted that when there was a meeting she would take care of the people, so that they would have something to eat and drink, that the coffeemaker was running. Thus, there was always that double concern of hers. For she was not a person who was content with these everyday services to the movement; she had great foresight. In fact, this to me is another important feature of hers: the way she understood the whole process, namely, as something that would go on for a long time, because nothing would be accomplished in ten years or twenty years, but that nevertheless you would have to bring all your strength to it, even if you did not see much progress. She was looking ahead and willing even to pass on the baton to the next generation, to the next person who was there to serve, and that is one of her great strengths. (94-95).

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