Carolina QuotesBlack people who were living in the South were constantly living with violence. Part of the job was to help them to understand what that violence was and how they in an organized fashion could help to stem it. The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence even when it was perpetrated by the police or, in some instances, the state.
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
“Black people who were living in the South were constantly li…” Ella Josephine Baker. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-D80E1942B5. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/d80e1942b5
More from Ella Josephine Baker
I've never believed that the people really were willing and able to pay the price of integration. From a practical standpoint, anyone who looked at the Harlem area knew that the potential for integration per se was basically impossible unless there were some radically innovative things done. And those innovative things would not be acceptable to those who ran the school system, nor to communities, nor even to the people who call themselves supporters of integration.
People have to be made to understand that they cannot look for salvation anywhere but to themselves.
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)