| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. By Barbara Ransby. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xxii, 470 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8078-2778-9.)
Ella Baker, who has drawn increasing scholarly attention over the last fifteen years, is most often described as an effective behind-the-scenes organizer, a characterization that, while accurate, also begs for more careful explication. Barbara Ransby's much-anticipated biography of Baker goes a great length toward accomplishing this goal while still leaving some parts of Baker's life and legacy obscured.	1
Ransby's is a full-scale biography but most especially a political and intellectual biography. Ransby's introduction and concluding chapter, in particular, frame Baker's significance in terms of the ideas embodied in her life's work: she was "a Freirian teacher, a Gramscian intellectual, and a radical humanist" (p. 357). Ransby ably applies these concepts, while also incorporating insights from the scholarship of others, to make sense of the far-ranging scope of Baker's political work. She concludes that Baker defies any neat categorization. Ransby's own metaphor is that of a quilt: Baker "patched together her worldview from the ideological fragments in her repertoire, binding together seemingly mismatched theories and traditions" (p. 373). In contrast to the attention paid to Baker's ideas, we learn very little about her personal life. Her husband and adopted daughter appear only rarely, reflecting both the paucity of sources and Ransby's willingness to honor Baker's reticence on these matters.	. . .

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