Helping found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
While working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Baker helped organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She describes how she helped the students plan and organize their new group.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Ella Baker, April 19, 1977. Interview G-0008. 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
- SUE THRASHER:
-
One of the things Casey and I were talking about this afternoon that we
were sort of interested in was the SNCC meeting in Raleigh and how that
came about and how you…. It must appear in one of these
papers as Charlotte.
- ELLA BAKER:
-
No. See, Charlotte was one of the first of the groups that….
Charlie Jones was there.
- SUE THRASHER:
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At Charlotte.
- ELLA BAKER:
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Charlie Jones was a young minister, and he had big-time relationships
there. And that was one of the places that had sat in. The meeting was
called for the Faster holiday in '60. I had suggested it was
very obvious that the manner in which these things were springing
up…. There was no real coordination or even exchange taking
place between the groups that were springing up. It was to a large
extent, I called you and said, "How come your school sat
in?" or something. I got a grant of about
$800 SCLC was willing to put up, and I got in touch with the
leadership of these different groups and got to writing them. And I
wanted to have the conference in Greensboro, preferably at A and T. I
didn't expect A and T to accept it anyway. But it was the
Easter holiday, and Bennett had historically had a religious convocation
of some sort, but they couldn't accommodate us. And so I knew
A and T wouldn't, but I think made the call. I may not have
even called them. So then I searched around. I knew a young dean at Shaw
and a young minister, and they began to work on it for me, and we went
there and had the conference. And I was hoping for not more than, say, a
hundred and some of the "leadership" of the sit-ins as
as we had culled it from the newspapers and so forth. And so it ended up
about three hundred or more people. I've got the list; I
don't know from the North, and white schools we had.
- CASEY HAYDEN:
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Was it pretty much, in terms of the southern students, black students who
were involved, pretty much names from the papers, and someone someone
else knew and…
- ELLA BAKER:
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Sure.
- CASEY HAYDEN:
-
What about the students in the Greensboro situation? What was their
contact with the organizations? Had some of them had some CORE
training?
- ELLA BAKER:
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No, the first students who sat in hadn't had so much CORE
training as sort of indoctrination. The young pharmacist that they had
been talking with, a local person, had had some knowledge about the CORE
technique, and this was the basis.
- CASEY HAYDEN:
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Were you involved at all with the formation of CORE?
- ELLA BAKER:
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No, I wasn't, but I knew CORE people. I never thought too much
of my capacity for passive resistance.
- CASEY HAYDEN:
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That wasn't exactly your orientation.
- ELLA BAKER:
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No. They at least emphasized the need for sort of a passive resistance
reaction, but it didn't always work out that way.
- CASEY HAYDEN:
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Then the next SNCC meeting was the Atlanta meeting.
- ELLA BAKER:
-
Yes, it was, but what we had to do…. SNCC had not been formed.
These were people who were called together in their leadership roles or
whatever delegated roles they chose. And they came, and the only couple
of things that I suggested be done were that the southern students have
a chance to think through their own problems, and that the other
people…. The northern students were much more articulate and
terribly sophisticated in phraseology if not ideology. But they were to
avoid the business of saying you reject it. There was a small group of
students and myself and the Rev. Jim Lawson. And it was in this kind of
context and some of the northern students. And there was a schedule
worked out in terms of when they would meet and when they
wouldn't meet together.
And so the southern students began the process of beginning to know each
other and to organization. And if you read Jim
Foreman's book where he points out that the hierarchy, the
Reverend and the others were then eager to see to it that this became a
part of SCLC. And I refused to be a party to it and said that the
students had a right to make their decision as to what they wanted to
be. When went down, they had decided that they would be a student—unaffiliated at that
stage—group, and that they would move towards
meeting…. They elected representatives from each of the
larger delegations to come to Atlanta once, I think, or at least a
couple of months during the summer. They didn't object to
coming together, but in the fall there was then by that time a desire
for a conference. Jane Stemblidge, who was at the Union Theological
Seminary, and I didn't even see her at the Raleigh meeting,
Fred Shuttlesworth had run into her, and he told me about her. And I got
in touch with her. He had told me that she said she would like to
work…
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
- SUE THRASHER:
-
So you and Jane worked all Fourth of July weekend, preparing things for
Bernard and Marion.
- ELLA BAKER:
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Yes. There was a basic statement, similar to what organizations take to
these conventions. And preparing them not only to give them a copy for
themselves, but several copies (I don't know how many). And
they went by coach train from Atlanta. I don't know how they
ever got to California by train [Laughter]
, but they worked that out anyhow. And they went to California,
and I think the Democrats were in California, and the Republicans were
in Chicago, I believe, that year. Or it may have been vice versa. But
they covered both of them. One was shortly after the other. And then
they came back. Jane Stemblidge was there, and so she stayed on to work
towards an October meeting. And Jane knew how to work. And so the conference was called in October, and out of
that came a furtherance of the concept of having representatives from
these groups designated by the students. And out of that came eventually
the setting up of an office in Atlanta.
- SUE THRASHER:
-
Were you on the SCLC staff while this was all going on, while SNCC was
being organized?
- ELLA BAKER:
-
I was leaving in August. I was going to leave anyway, because I knew we
couldn't stay there together. And Clyde Walker was coming in.
It had been determined that he would come in, and that's why
they were so solicitous about trying to capture the student group. So as
far as payroll, I think I may have left it even before August, but
certainly in August.
I had met Rosetta Gardner and some others, and she suggested the
potential of this thing at the YWCA, which turned out to be a special
project, which perhaps you . Was it you?
- CASEY HAYDEN:
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Yes.
- ELLA BAKER:
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And who else?
- CASEY HAYDEN:
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Mary and Bobby Yancey.
- ELLA BAKER:
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Was it Bobby Yancey and you?
- CASEY HAYDEN:
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I think it was just me, and then when Mary came on Bobby and Mary shared
the job.
- ELLA BAKER:
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Yes, that's right. And you were the first, by yourself. I
didn't know you.
- CASEY HAYDEN:
-
No, I don't think we had met then. I think we met, actually,
at the Atlanta conference.