Carolina QuotesI 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.
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
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“I did a good deal of speaking, and I went to Queens, I went …” Ella Josephine Baker. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-EB0CE87C15. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/eb0ce87c15
More from Ella Josephine Baker
In my organizational work, I have never thought in terms of my "making a contribution." I just thought of myself as functioning where there was a need. And if I have made a contribution I think it may be that I had some influence on a large number of people.
As assistant field secretary of the branches of the NAACP, much of my work was in the South. At that time the NAACP was the leader on the cutting edge of social change. I remember when NAACP membership in the South was the basis for getting beaten up or even killed.
The movement of the '50's and '60's was carried largely by women, since it came out of church groups. It was sort of second nature to women to play a supportive role. How many made a conscious decision on the basis of the larger goals, how many on the basis of habit pattern, I don't know. But it's true that the number of women who carried the movement is much larger than that of men. Black women have had to carry this role, and I think the younger women are insisting on an equal footing.