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<\/a>Barbara Ransby joins members of the MLK Day Committee and guests for a dinner at the President’s House hosted by Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
Introduced as a \u201cscholar-activist\u201d by Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics, Ransby has both studied and participated in countless areas of activism and social justice, from publishing a book on Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement to co-writing the famous New York Times<\/em> ad “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves,\u201d which protested the U.S. Senate\u2019s treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991.<\/p>\n Ransby\u2019s address looked at the need for this coupling of scholarship and activism. \u201cI want to wrestle with the challenges of this moment and rely on the past to make sense of the present, to provoke us to reimagine a better collective future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Associate Professor of Leslie Hill greets Barbara Ransby after introducing her in Memorial Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n Some of those challenges include the rise of violent white nationalism in recent years, police violence in marginalized communities, and ever-widening economic disparities in the United States.<\/p>\n What exactly do today\u2019s problems have to do with intersectionality, Ella Baker, and the Movement for Black Lives?<\/p>\n \u201cI would argue, everything,\u201d Ransby said.<\/p>\n \u201cIntersectionality has become a rockstar in our political lexicon,\u201d Ransby said. It\u2019s appeared in discourse from the #MeToo movement, Golden Globes speeches, newspaper op-eds, and there\u2019s even a new Institute for Intersectional Studies at Columbia University.<\/p>\n The term was coined in the 1980s by law professor and critical race theorist Kimberl\u00e9 Williams Crenshaw, and it helps us understand that identities and institutions are not isolated, but interact with and mediate each other.<\/p>\n \u201cStructures of power do not exist in silos, but reinforce and bolster each other in symbiotic relationships,\u201d Ransby said.<\/p>\n Faculty, students, staff, and community members filled Memorial Commons to hear Ransby. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n Intersectionality was integral to activism in this country long before Crenshaw came up with the term.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Sojourner Truth declared \u2018Ain\u2019t I a woman?\u2019 in 1859, pointing out that she was a black mother and unfree worker, her words reflected an intersectional framework,\u201d Ransby said.<\/p>\n Ransby cited the #MeToo movement as a good example of intersectionality, explaining how powerful women in Hollywood incorporated stories of abuse they heard from the National Alliance of Domestic Workers into their narrative.<\/p>\n \u201cRather than saying, \u2018We are all experiencing the same thing as women,\u2019 the #MeToo group appended the domestic workers\u2019 statement to their own as an affirmation that we can be united without glossing over our differences,\u201d Ransby said.<\/p>\n Ella Baker \u201cwas intersectional before there was a term for it,\u201d said Ransby, who studied the political organizer for 15 years.<\/p>\n Born in 1903, Baker spent most of her life fighting for the civil rights movement, as well as organizing for various human rights and labor groups.<\/p>\n Labeled by her colleagues as a \u201cdifficult woman,\u201d Baker was not afraid to challenge people in her own circles. \u201cShe struggled inside the organizations that employed her, demanding more inclusion and democracy and accountability,\u201d Ransby said.<\/p>\n Though an ally of Martin Luther King Jr., Baker criticized his leadership.<\/p>\n \u201cDr. King once said that leadership flows from the pulpit to the pew, and for Ella Baker it was precisely the opposite,\u201d said Ransby.<\/p>\n Famously quoted as saying, \u201cStrong people don\u2019t need a strong leader,\u201d Baker simply did not believe that a larger-than-life leader was imperative for social change.<\/p>\n As a behind-the-scenes organizer, Baker\u2019s career life and work has many takeaways, including the importance of grassroots organizing, bringing the most marginalized communities to the center of activism, and supporting women in leadership.<\/p>\n \u201cShe did not see the movement from King\u2019s mountaintop, but rather from the valleys and back alleys of the struggle for freedom,\u201d said Ransby.<\/p>\n<\/a>Intersectionality<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Ella Baker<\/h3>\n