Claudia Jones and Ella Baker :: Essays Papers

Claudia Jones and Ella BakerOn Christmas day 1964, Claudia Jones, only forty-nine years old, died alone in her London apartment. Over trey hundred people attended her funeral on January 9, 1965 to commemorate the woman who spent her entire adult life agitating against oppression. Visitors who come to Londons Highgate memorial park see that next to the grave of Karl Marx there is the tombstone of Claudia Jones. Many wonder what earned her the honour of being buried beside the founder of scientific communism. 1 On the opposite side of the globe, Ella Baker, a leading African-American genteel Rights leader, was defending her theories of decentralized leadership. Tensions mounted in the movement when grassroots organizations rejected the ideas of central leadership and non-violence. cardinal such organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), founded in part, by the efforts of Ella Baker, became dedicated to Ellas ideals of decentralized leadership, chall enging the authority of high profile individuals in the Civil Rights Movement. In this paper I will examine the experiences of these two radicals. Both Ella Baker and Claudia Jones spent their entire adult lives writing, speaking and debating the issues that African-Americans faced. These issues included racist oppression, frame hierarchy and the roles of women. However, although they both confronted the same issues, they had divergent philosophies that shaped their political careers. Their individual ideas can be examined in foothold of Winston James definition of radicalism and Cedric Robinsons conjecture of the development of the Black extremist tradition. Although the radicalism of both Ella Baker and Claudia Jones fits within Robinson and James definitions, their unique experiences as women helped define their ideas and theories, and transform the role of women in the Black Radical tradition.In Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, he defines radicalism o r radical politics as, the challenging of the status quo either on the basis of accessible class, race (or ethnicity), or a combination of the two. 2 He goes on to articulate, in terms of the above definition, radicals. According to James radicals, therefore, are avowed anti-capitalists, as puff up as adherents of varieties of Black Nationalism. 3 Included in this definition are those who have attempted to unite anti-capitalist and nationalist thought. Though James examined Black Radicalism in terms of Caribbean migrants in the United States, his definition could be applied to native-born African-Americans as well.