Carolina QuotesI 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 found a spot in the public limelight. It usually means he has been touted through the public media, which means that the media made him, and the media may undo him. There is also the danger in our culture that, because a person is called upon to give public statements and is acclaimed by the establishment, such a person gets to the point of believing that he is the movement. Such people get so involved with playing the game of being important that they exhaust themselves and their time, and they don't do the work of actually organizing people.
Ella Josephine Baker Connected to the Carolinas
Source
No citation is recorded for this quotation.
- form
- interview
- work
- 1970 Interview in Black Women in White America: A Documentary History by Gerda Lerner
- year
- 1970
no citation recorded
Cite this record
“I have always felt it was a handicap for oppressed peoples t…” Ella Josephine Baker. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-318D1EC32B. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/318d1ec32b
More from Ella Josephine Baker
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. (1964)
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 would permit or would welcome Blacks to live in the same houses with them, which was the only practical way at that stage to achieve integration, they squirmed.
People have to be made to understand that they cannot look for salvation anywhere but to themselves.