The SCLC and spontaneous collective action
Baker describes the early character of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as spontaneous. Building upon the momentum of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Baker argues that the SCLC sought to capitalize on a collective sense of energy and activity in order to effect change. Overall, she argues that the SCLC was not built upon a decisive ideology, although it was deeply wed to philosophies of Christianity and Ghandian nonviolence.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Ella Baker, September 4, 1974. Interview G-0007. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
Beyond the
initial idea of the organization, what kind of character do you see the
organization as having in its earlier stage? Can you lend any kind of
character to it, other than the fact that it was composed of ministers
who really didn't know anything about organization? What kind
of a character did it have, or is that too broad or ambiva lent a
question?
- ELLA BAKER:
-
Well, I don't know whether it's ambivalent but I
think in the nature of the time, the character of the organization can
best be defined as something to meet the need of or capitalizing
upon—this was their design—the mass impact that
the Montgomery boycott had. Here you have a situation historically
unthought of and unpredicted, where thousands of individuals, just black
ordinary people, subjected themselves to inconveniences that were
certainly beyond the thinking of most folk. Where they would walk: old
women and maids who ran the risk of losing their little income would
walk, if they got there, rather than ride the buses. Now this meant that
you had a momentum that had not been seen even in the work of the
N.A.A.C.P… And it was something that suggested a higher
potential for wide-spread action through the South. So I think this has
to be considered in any evaluation of S.C.L.C… (I may have
lost my point.)
- EUGENE WALKER:
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We were talking about the character of it. You're describing
the spontaneity of it and the exceptional capacity that the people had
to sacrifice.
- ELLA BAKER:
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Yes, for what they considered to be a point of liberation. This was
supposedly designed to escalate that throughout the South. If you recall
the first organization meeting in Atlanta was
tied up with the concept of transportation, mass
action on transportation, which of course was rather limited but this
was suggestive to it. I must say, it did not come from the group. It
came from somewhere else. The whole concept was we needed in the South a
mass based organization that might further the involvement of masses of
people similar to what had taken place in Montgomery. It
didn't have to be a bus boycott, but whatever. I think this
is it.
- EUGENE WALKER:
-
Yes, you're definately speaking to what I was talking about.
You have to go to the inception and the motivation behind it being
founded to really get at it. If we were to look at the Bolshevik
revolution in Russia, you know that their movement was routed very
deeply in ideological kinds of considerations. such an ideology in this
movement but it's so ellusive that I'm going to
have to conclude I believe that there was no basic ideology involved in
the founding of S.C.L.C… Not really the
N.A.A.C.P.—unless you're going to call the
Declaration of Indepence and the Constitution of the United States an
ideology because they don't really put out pamphlets, write
conceptual frameworks, which is found in ideology dealing with the
system per se. They come up with tactis and programs
to deal with problems dealing with race relations.
- ELLA BAKER:
-
Yes.
- EUGENE WALKER:
-
And I'm trying to really examine it. I thought I'd
clear my mind, as you can see, but these are the kinds of things that I
am trying to look at.
- ELLA BAKER:
-
No, I don't think there was an ideology that certainly was
comparable to the Marxist-Leninist concept of a changed society. The
nearest to an ideology would be, let's call it, the Christian
philosophy and that tied in with the philosophy of Ghandian
non-violence, non-violent mass action. That was the nearest to it. But
this is itself becomes an ellusive sort of a thing when,
let's call it, the impact of the need to grow enters in and
maybe the influence from individual leadership as to what shall we do
next. And the "what shall we do next" frequently comes
from sources other than the organization—like the
identification with the anti-war movement. This did not develop out of
the organization. It's out of discussion within the
organization. It no doubt came as a suggestion to the president and the
invitation to the president to come and speak at anti-war rallies. And I
know something about somebody saying, "There is a time now for
Martin to speak on anti-war. Do you think that this is the time for
it?" And somebody would say, "Yes, it is."
Somebody would talk to him; somebody that he felt duty-bound,
let's call it, to listen to.
- EUGENE WALKER:
-
Okay. So the character then—and I'm just trying to
theorize here and just give off kinds of responses and I want your
reaction to them. The character here then, as I said, would be more and
more of an action kind of a movement than one which would lend itself to
a long-term plan or an ideology based on bringing about permanent social
changes in the system, as such. And this action oriented movement lent
itself more spontaneity than it did to the development of a structure
which would require a kind of rigid format down through the years. So,
this I think more than anything else would reflect the ultimate
character that was inherent in what S.C.L.C. was doing. Or would you
differ with that?
- ELLA BAKER:
-
No, I wouldn't differ. I think you're quite correct
there because the personnell who provided the leadership for S.C.L.C.
had never come to grips with a philosophical concept other than the
general concept of nonviolent mass action. I don't think
there was much—I'll be gratious and
say—either time or other bases for in-depth thinking about
how far non-violent mass action can go and to what extent can you really
involve people. You se, you may talk about it but when you
respond—as the organization did—to
situations—their major efforts were in response to
situations—and when you exhaust yourself in situations like
in Florida or situations in
Albany…
- EUGENE WALKER:
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Like St. Aug?
- ELLA BAKER:
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St. Aug. and Albany—what do you have? And you see all of this
is being done within the time period of two or three years.
Let's call it the overthrow of the Czar. It was not a two
year thing. And maybe the general format, not only the format but the
pattern of communication and training and action, the development of an
anti-czarist movement was much more stimulated, I suppose, by the rather
harsh physical conditions. And here you have black people living in
"conditions" that were great affluence, the president
becoming an international figure. These harsh conditions were
not…
- EUGENE WALKER:
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… were never really touched.
- ELLA BAKER:
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Never really, yes.