Ella Baker

And the ability that it doesn't necessarily take waiting for, you know, a heroic figure or a charismatic figure to come, come by.

I think it's, gosh, it's either Ella Baker or Fannie Lou Hamer who said strong people don't need strong leaders, you know,

Ella Baker.

Yes.

Ella Baker.

And, and I think that's, that quote has come to resonate so much with me.

It, you know, after doing this podcast, it's seeing people be able to be, let me not use a trite phrase, but seeing people being able to, to promote and take responsibility for the change within their communities and their neighborhoods.

Just an incredible work of journalism on top of everything else.

Howard Zinn was asked alongside Ella Baker, the famous, legendary Ella Baker, to be the adult advisors for SNCC.

And that basically meant they were in the room when the leadership, people like Bob Moses and Diane Nash and soon-to-be Stokely Carmichael to become Kwame Ture, James Foreman, John Lewis, the names are so familiar to us.

They're getting together to try to figure out what to do, and Zinn and Ella Baker are there to offer whatever advice they can.

And it really was because the Spellman women were members and leaders of SNCC that Howard Zinn had this reputation as a middle-aged white guy who brought a lot to the table for a black freedom struggle.

And he did, because one of the things he did as an adult advisor of SNCC was he oversaw the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Schools.

And you kind of really...

You dig deep, right? You cover many different layers of a social formation, and you also are attentive to what Ella Baker called spade work and the kind of, like, everyday political work which lays the ground for larger political leaps.

But I do think you do have a couple of main interests that I think especially over the years that you've been doing the show in a kinda cumulative way have really been standing out to me, and I wonder how self-conscious this is.

You've got-- These are kind of theoretical preoccupations.

But our black, our white pages today.

Ella Baker.

and the black freedom

movement, a radical democratic vision.

It says, you know, ironically, it says Ella Baker, um, Baker criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership.

She promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the oppressed to understand their words and advocate for themselves.

So literally, what we see Angie Nixon doing in this moment is right out of what Ella Baker taught And so to see individuals that used to run the Elevators

just jump in first in the white supremacy.

We have Fannie Lou Hamer, who connected equity with ecology.

And we have Ella Baker, the quintessential organizer of the civil rights movement.

And then we have Dr.

King, the quintessential prophet