Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Gender and American Culture)

Thank you to Barbara Ransby for the years of work on this book. I feel like I have met Ella Baker. Like I have been able to spend time with her. To be influenced by her work. I was also able to meet so many people of her time — some of whom I knew about and some of whom I did not. Pieces of history have come together for me in important ways. This book is important in sharing about the life and thinking of a phenomenal woman. So inspiring. I definitely recommend this book.

This book is a MUST READ. My professor assigned it for my doctoral class and I couldn't put it down. I loved it so much that I wrote to the author. Dr. Ransby did the damn thing and introduced me to Ella Baker, a warrior woman who fought for civil rights and to me, didn't get the credit she deserved when she was alive. I wasn't taught about her in school, and felt so empowered by her after reading this book. I wish more historians made their work easy to read, engaging, challenging and forthcoming. I couldn't put this book down and learned so much. Do yourself a favor, read this book!

Excellent book about a true pioneer of the civil rights movement. Ransby is an excellent historian and I look forward to her book about Black Lives Matter movement. Baker had a commitment to grassroots organizing and did her best in the NAACP and the SCLC for women and ordinary citizens to be heard and to be empowered. Her biggest influence, perhaps, was with the founding and work of the early Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), working with John Lewis and others to organize boycotts, voter registration drives, and Freedom Summer. The book is a pleasure to read and helps us to understand how a black woman could only go so far in influencing the men and organizations that dominated at the time.

I started reading this while in Norfolk VA over the summer, not realizing it was Ella Baker’s birthplace and after reading Barbara Ransby’s latest book, Making All Black Lives Matter. Ransby’s command of history and narrative fills an important gap in the story of an iconic activist and freedom fighter who disrupted gender roles and expectations, transgressed respectability lines as delineated by blacks and whites and created, as Ransby notes, a magnificent and unique legacy.

This book came in perfect condition. I am excited to read it and learn more about this movement and better myself to help others better!

I started this book to learn about Ella Baker, and feel like I walked away with a blueprint to organizing, activism and power building

Well researched, well written, moving account of a stunning person.

Barbara Ransby is a brilliant historian, a good writer who bring this important American figure to life. Ransby is one of our most important historians, and Ella Baker unknown to most Americans had profound influence on the 20th century and on the lives of young Civil Rights workers in the 1950's and 60's. Ransby captured it in all its power and nuance.