Leaderless

Can a movement really be successful in bringing about desired change without a leader? This is the question which this essay will explore by looking through the lens of Ella Baker. Ella Baker one of the foremost fighters of the civil rights movement dedicated her life for the cause of social justice, yet not many people know of her the way people would know of Martin L. King and Malcom X – one may think of this as unfair, perhaps it is, but unknowingly this reality makes the reality of her ideas and beliefs much stronger and immortal. She’d tell all of us, talk about the movement, talk about ideas do not talk about me, she’d tell me to not write about her in this blog but to write about the civil rights movement as a vehicle for change. My heartfelt apologies.

Baker was part of various social justice and African-American Organizations throughout her career, not staying so long as to become a focal leader of any of them. A point which she was criticized for but she swiftly demolished, “….as far as I’m concerned I was never working for an organization, I have always tried to work for a cause, and the cause to me is bigger than any organization. Bigger than any group of people, and it is the cause of humanity.” She heavily believed that movements should not have visible leaders, movements should be somewhat leaderless as the struggle for humanity is can not stand upon one person, they can not and should not have the power to gather the attention because it will be the eventual downfall of it. Of course, we need to look at this claim with nuance, this does not literally mean ‘leaderless’ in absolute, to extrapolate such a definition would be unfair to her idea. A leaderless movement of course would have ‘leader(s)’ or a group of people at the forefront to organize and lead but not few and not too long. Leaders need to change to let others carry it along and there need to be a lot of them, everyone is a leader for the rights of themselves. How essential is a leader anyways?

We will now exclusively talk about that idea only; Ella Baker would look down upon a discussion about her which does not include debating a claim itself. A leader or a few prominent ones bring a lot of benefit to any movement. Leaders by way of their charisma can and do increase the following of the cause (number of supporters are make or break in most cases), they by way of their position can resolve conflict within the movement. Leader(s) also end up focusing media limelight, which allows for the most efficient use of the limited media attention a movement can get, which is why most organizations have an official spokesperson and what not.

Ella would argue that leaders crowd out differing ideas, the way that they interpret issues is the way it gets packaged to the outside. Leaders are fallible (e.g. Elijah Muhammad) and compromises on personal character stands to derail the entire movement. You don’t need charisma to move the masses on the grassroots, the plight of people would organize them on the base level.

Empirical evidence suggests that without a visible charismatic leader people often don’t remain organized on the grassroots, their plight is not enough to be able to organize and follow a singular strategy to achieve change. We all need hope to fight out battles, everyone does not have the ability to fight back, a leader provides that hope and assistance to fight especially when competing movements exist to move masses with their charismatic appeals and rhetoric. This does not mean that Baker’s ideas were not important, they are indeed very very important. Leaders need to be kept in check, they must not be allowed to accumulate too much power or build a cult, masses within the movement need to have power devolved to them – a leader must lead, not command.