Fluent Essays

No quotes or external sources. Analysis on all 3 sources and their roles in the civil rights movement. Paper must be 2 pages long. 12pt font, Times New Roman, Double spaced. ella_baker.pdf malcolm_x.pdf mlk.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Southern Communication Journal Vol. 79, No. 1, January–March 2014, pp. 27–40 The Parallel Rhetorics of Ella Baker Mittie K. Carey Scholars have done much to uncover the contributions of civil rights organizer Ella Baker. Her invitational rhetoric has been their primary focus. The titles of honor bestowed upon Baker say very little about her rhetorical discourse beyond this focus. In this essay, I analyze Baker’s parallel employment of liberal, socialist, and radical feminist styles of rhetoric, alongside her invitational style. By examining a body of work that includes two Baker primary sources, pertinent quotes from several of her speeches, and several other sources, I substantiate my argument that Baker did not employ invitational rhetoric exclusively but often projected it along parallel paths with other types of rhetoric as she fought against patriarchy and sexism as a civil rights activist. To biographer and critic Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker was an “eclectic quilt.”1 As such, she created identity for marginalized and muted people who she patiently connected together so that their corporate value could be realized and their unified voices could be heard. To Ransby’s husband Peter Dorne, Baker was “beyond category.”2 To Timothy Jenkins, one of Baker’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “Snick”) apprentices, she was “the mortar between the bricks.”3 And, to Robert Parris Moses, civil rights and community organizing leader in his own right, and other students of Baker, she was the “Fundi,” the Swahili title of honor for that person who is valued for her or his expertise within the community and who passes on what has been learned to the next generation through example and instruction.4 This list of ontological metaphors defining the personage of Baker merely hints at the breadth of her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement5 and other struggles from 1930 through 1980. Yet, it says nothing of the depth of her rhetorical discourse. In her 2008 publication, Marilyn Bordwell deLaure capably captures Baker’s groupcentered leadership philosophy as a model of what Sonya K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin have since classified as invitational rhetoric. In that same essay, deLaure’s ephemeral Mittie K. Carey, Department of Communication, Western Kentucky University. Correspondence to: Mittie K. Carey, Department of Communication, Western Kentucky University, 1906 College Heights Blvd, Bowling Green, KY 42101. E-mail: mittie.carey@wku.edu ISSN 1041-794X (print)/1930-3203 (online) © 2014 Southern States Communication Association. DOI: 10.1080/1041794X.2013.847478 28 The Southern Communication Journal observation that Baker incorporated rhetorical styles other than an invitational one is most intriguing. In this analytical work, I delve more deeply into Baker’s parallel employment of liberal, socialist, and radical feminist styles of rhetoric, alongside her invitational style, by examining her use of these methods during her rhetorical formation, her years with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), her time with SNCC, and beyond. An examination of a body of work that includes two Baker primary sources, pertinent quotes from several of her speeches, interviews, books, several scholarly articles, and a DVD supports my argument that over the course of her 50 years of civil rights activism, Baker critiqued and challenged patriarchy and sexism within the male-dominated civil rights organizations with which she was affiliated. At the same time, she motivated and empowered SNCC students and grassroots activists by employing a more inviting style, as this essay substantiates. Her propensity to employ these parallel rhetorics is representative of Lorraine Code’s perspective on “positionality,” 6 which does not lock the speaker into either persuasive or dialogical methods of communicating. Instead, it allows utilization of different rhetorics, based upon the responses of interlocutors and the specific rhetorical situation. Additional support for my argument is found in Bone, Griffin, and Scholz’s proposal of a link between invitational rhetoric and civility7 wherein certain oppressive situations demand a response that is antithetical to invitational rhetoric; that is, a response that is more uncivil in nature. The sexist environment that Baker described during some of her time as a civil rights activist constitutes such a situation. Second-Wave Feminism and Invitational Rhetoric Broadly and summarily speaking, second-wave feminism, which has it genus in the late 1960s, can be categorized into three major facets: liberal feminism, socialist feminism, and radical feminism. Liberal feminists sought no special privileges but advocated for the same economic, educational, and political opportunities for women and men without regard to the sex of the individual. Proponents of this concept believed that achievement of these goals could be attained through legal channels and that such an achievement would result in full citizenship for women, thus eliminating their forced relegation to the private sphere as wives and mothers. In comparison, socialist feminists believed that the marginalization of women was woven into the ideology of a capitalistic society, along with racism, classism, and other oppressions. These oppressions resulted in economic disparities and exploitation of women and other marginalized groups. Advocates of socialist feminism believed that, in time, institutions and corporations would eventually change their policies to rectify these inequalities while more extreme, radical feminists rallied against women’s oppression inside and outside the home. From their viewpoint, the oppression of women by the dominant and controlling sex was the oldest and most deeply-rooted form of oppression. Its offenses ranged from subtle everyday nuances of privileging men over women (our male-oriented lexicons and vocabulary, references to women as Mrs. John Doe, etc.), to the physical abuse of women by their husbands, to the sexual harassment of women in the workplace. Radical The Parallel Rhetorics of Ella Baker 29 feminists believed that the only way to eradicate such forms of patriarchal oppression was to relocate women and their perspectives from the margins to positions of power in corporations, politics, universities, scholarly publications, science, public discourse, gender and sex roles, and every other facet of society. This move from margin to center would ensure that women’s perspectives were heard and adhered to. Baker incorporated these feminist perspectives in her interactions with the maledominated leadership of the NAACP and SCLC. At the same time, she engaged in a group-centered leadership philosophy in her guidance of SNCC and local civil rights activists. Foss and Griffin describe invitational rhetoric as an invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-determination. Invitational rhetoric constitutes an invitation to the audience to enter the rhetor’s world and to see it as the rhetor does … the invitational rhetor does not judge or denigrate others’ perspective but is open to and tries to appreciate and validate those perspectives, even if they differ dramatically from the rhetor’s own.8 Foss and Griffin are quick to point out that many women and men rhetors incorporated some form of invitational rhetoric prior to their (Foss and Griffin) naming it invitational rhetoric. Ella Baker was one such person. The following paragraphs will elucidate the parallel paths of her invitational, liberal, socialist, and radical feminist perspectives during her rhetorical formation and beyond. Rhetorical Formation Baker’s journey to Atlanta to work for the NAACP, SCLC, and, ultimately, to serve as advisor to SNCC began in the town of Littleton, North Carolina, where she was raised. The granddaughter of a slave who was beaten for refusing to marry the man her master chose for her, Baker was nurtured by a strong Christian father and mother and that same grandmother, who encouraged her to think strategically, speak distinctively, and act benevolently. There was no adherence to social hierarchies in the Baker household. Her elders did not tolerate the notion that their ownership of land and other material possessions equated to entitlement. Instead, they shared land, tools, food, and child-rearing responsibilities with other relatives and neighbors in their closely knit community. Explaining these familial Christian social practices, Baker was taught, “Your relationship to human beings was far more important than your relationship to the amount of money that you made.”9 Although she would later acquaint herself with the philosophies of anarchist George Schulyer and some of the components of Marxism,10 it was within the egalitarian environment of her childhood under the tutelage of her parents and grandmother that Baker began her rhetorical formation. This environment was not only paramount in the shaping of her future rhetorical styles of leadership with the aforementioned civil rights organizations, it also cemented her values of justice and self-determination, values she practiced throughout her life. Baker described herself as “the talker [that would] speak to people.” She was the child who was always pushed to the front by the other children in her family and 30 The Southern Communication Journal neighborhood to serve as spokesperson for whatever cause they were advocating at the time. Baker’s ability to articulate pertinent issues also served her classmates and her well during her matriculation at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she graduated as class valedictorian. While there, Baker assumed the role of lead organizer and spokesperson for the student body. From that experience, Baker reasoned, “People tend to want you … if you can talk … especially if it was having [sic] to do with argumentation or debate.”11 Upon graduation from Shaw, Baker eschewed teaching positions and moved to Harlem in New York City where she became a Renaissance woman. During this time, her passion for gender and racial equality intensified. She lamented over the inequitable plight of African Americans during the stock market crash of 1929, so much so that she, along with several friends, formed the Young Negroes’ Cooperative League (YNCL). The purpose of the league was to enlighten Black consumers on the benefits of cooperative buying power and to empower them to take control of their own economic outcomes. Drenched in Baker’s perspectives on consensus leadership, the organizational charter “pledged itself to the full inclusion and equal participation of women.”12 Such feminist language,13 though highly uncommon in 1932, depicts the principles of invitational rhetoric, which Foss and Griffin would later define as “an invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-determination.”14 At the same time, Baker’s perspective is equally representative of the goals of socialist feminism, which seeks relief from economic and sexist oppressions for women. Baker’s experience with the YNCL led to her selection as assistant project supervisor with the Works Progress Administration, a government-sponsored organization that found jobs for the underprivileged. This position proved to be additional training ground for her rhetorical skills. Baker, the NAACP, and SCLC In 1941, the 38-year-old Baker accepted a job with the NAACP where she held several positions over the course of five years, including that of assistant field secretary for its southern branches. In this capacity, Baker travelled across the South and developed strong alliances with local grassroots leaders. She strongly objected to the NAACP’s failure to include these leaders in the organization’s decision-making process. Her objections stemmed from her upbringing, which, in her own words, “helped to strengthen my concept about the need for people to have a sense of their own value and their strengths and it became accentuated when I began to travel in the forties for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”15 The association’s devaluing of the ideas and input of local residents prompted Baker to assertively pursue the issue with the male leadership. Her efforts were met with resistance as well as repercussions, which made her professional life with the NAACP extremely oppressive. She was reprimanded in writing for abuse of personal time and for the nonperformance of her job duties, despite the fact that she averaged well over 40 working hours The Parallel Rhetorics of Ella Baker 31 a week.16 As a result of this unjust treatment, Baker resigned from the NAACP in 1946, citing the following three reasons: I feel that the Association is falling short of its present possibilities; that the full capacities of staff have not been used; that there is little chance of mine being used in the immediate future.17 Baker later elaborated, “independent thinking [by the staff] was not to be tolerated”18 by the male leaders. Baker’s resignation letter and later comments reflect both her belief in a consensus form of leadership and her stance against the marginalization of women in the workplace. Her stated reasons for resigning further elucidate the parallel paths of her invitational and socialist/radical feminist rhetorics. Along one path, she expressed indignation of the fact that women were not invited to participate. Along the other path, her stated reasons for resigning dispelled the notion that women should passively accept inequality in the workplace. While working with other companies, including the New York Cancer Committee, Baker continued her association with the NAACP chapter in Harlem as a volunteer. Because of her positive contributions and growing popularity with New York members, she was rehired by the NAACP in the early 1950s as branch president of the Harlem office and eventually transformed it into one of the largest in the country. Immediately after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1957–1958 successful Montgomery bus boycott campaign, Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Sam Levison reportedly contacted King and convinced him of the need to establish a permanent organization that would keep the momentum of the boycott going. In 1958, King, under pressure from Rustin and Levison, reluctantly hired Baker to provide administrative support for the newly formed SCLC in Atlanta. She accepted the position but later admitted she felt insulted because the three men had discussed and decided her future without her input. Soon after Baker’s arrival at SCLC, she realized that, once again, she was employed in a maledominated, patriarchal environment similar to the one at the NAACP. Her situation was exacerbated by the fact that her male peers were not only steeped in secular traditions of patriarchy and sexism but the majority of them also were Baptist ministers who, according to the Reverend Dr. Wyatt T. Walker, Baker’s eventual successor as executive secretary of SCLC, were not accustomed to being questioned, challenged or disagreed with by women and other laypersons.19 But, Baker was not one to keep silent and seldom hesitated to speak her mind. At a 1980 reunion of SNCC given in her honor she explained, “I was difficult. I wasn’t an easy pushover ’cause I could talk back a lot—not only could but did. And so, that was frustrating to those who had not had a certain kind of experience”20 that would have equipped them, as Gloster Current corroborates, to deal with a woman as “strong, deliberate, and stubborn” as she was.21 Baker expressed her leadership philosophy in simple and straight-forward terms: “strong people don’t need strong leaders.”22 But, as acting executive director of the SCLC, she was expected to develop a solid leader-centered regional coalition that would roll under the authority of one leader, King. However, Baker remained true to her own convictions and continued to utilize the group-centered leadership concepts upon which she had come to rely. Instead of grooming local grassroots leaders to 32 The Southern Communication Journal become acquiescent and adoring followers of any one leader, she made equipping them to assume shared leadership roles her number one priority. Baker said in one interview, “we cannot lead a struggle that involves masses of people without getting the people to understand what their potentials are, what their strengths are.”23 Baker was highly critical of King’s leader-centered principles and confronted him over the issue on more than one occasion. In liberal feminist fashion, Baker proposed to King that since Black women were the primary contributors to social and religious organizations, they should be included in strategic planning and other decision-making processes. Following the social norms of the day, King gave Baker’s suggestion a paternalistically nod then ignored it. Their perspectives on a woman’s right to work in the public sphere were polar opposites. When, as an example, King was asked by Septima Clark, Baker’s colleague in the SCLC office, to write the preface of her autobiography. He wrote: Echoes In My Soul epitomizes the continuous struggle of the Southern Negro woman to realize her role as a mother while fulfilling her forced position as community teacher, intuitive fighter for human rights and leader of her unlettered and disillusioned people.24 In essence, King recognized women’s abilities to lead; he simply did not condone it. Baker realized this and commented I had known … that there would never be any role for me in a leadership position. Why? First, I’m a woman … Also, the combination of being a woman, and an older woman, presented some problems … the ego problems involved in having to feel that here is someone who had the capacity for a certain amount of leadership and, certainly, had more information about a lot of things than they possessed at that time— this would never have lent itself to my being a leader in the movement there.25 Arguably, Baker was King’s most vocal internal critic. Following one of his Crusades for Citizenship annual conferences, which produced a large attendance but no mass campaigns in its aftermath, Baker wrote in an office memo: The word Crusade connotes for me a vigorous movement … involving masses of people. In search for action that might help develop for SCLC more of the obvious characteristics of a crusade … I submit for your consideration … [that to] play a unique role in the South, SCLC must offer, basically, a different “brand of goods” that fills unmet needs of the people. At the same time, it must provide a sense of achievement and recognition for many people, particularly local leadership.26 SCLC’s exultation of its charismatic leader—King—was counterproductive to the development of those local leaders who, from Baker’s viewpoint, were necessary if the needs of the indigent Black residents were to be met. Baker did not hesitate to let King and the other leaders know how she felt, but to no avail. As she later shared in an interview, King “was not yet ready for the kind of leadership that would have inspired his men to grabble with … ideological differences and patterns of organization.”27 Baker’s harsh critique of King suggests that she was comfortable in circumventing the organization’s sexist standards of civility28 in those cases where she and others felt that they were victims of oppression from him and other male leaders. For her, this The Parallel Rhetorics of Ella Baker 33 method of direct confrontation combated injustice and inequality m ... 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