Quotes by Ella Baker

“The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use.”

“[Our children] had the privilege of growing up where they'd raised a lot of food. They were never hungry. They could share their food with people. And so you share your lives with people.”

“Strong people don't need strong leaders.”

“Give light and people will find the way.”

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

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

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

“Strong people do not need strong leaders.”

“You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me, she told two writers, Ellen Cantarow and Susan Gushee O'Malley. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or...”

“In my organizational work, I have never thought in terms of my making a contribution. I just thought of myself as functioning where there was a need. And if I have made a contribution I think it ma...”

“As assistant field secretary of the branches of the NAACP, much of my work was in the South. At that time the NAACP was the leader on the cutting edge of social change. I remember when NAACP member...”

“You would go into areas where people were not yet organized in the NAACP and try to get them more involved. Maybe you would start with some simple thing like the fact that they had no street lights...”

“Black people who were living in the South were constantly living with violence. Part of the job was to help them to understand what that violence was and how they in an organized fashion could help...”

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

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

“When the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school desegregation came, I was serving as chairman of the Educational Committee of the New York branch. We began to deal with the problems of de facto segr...”

“I've never believed that the people really were willing and able to pay the price of integration. From a practical standpoint, anyone who looked at the Harlem area knew that the potential for integ...”

“I did a good deal of speaking, and I went to Queens, I went to the upper West side, and the people very eagerly said they wanted school integration. But when you raised the question of whether they...”

“I have always felt it was a handicap for oppressed peoples to depend so largely upon a leader, because unfortunately in our culture, the charismatic leader usually becomes a leader because he has f...”

“The movement of the '50's and '60's was carried largely by women, since it came out of church groups. It was sort of second nature to women to play a supportive role. How many made a conscious deci...”