Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era

2. Cops, Schools, and Communism: Local Politics and Global Ideologies—New York City in the 1950s

2 Cops, Schools, and Communism: Local Politics and Global Ideologies— New York City in the 1950s BARBARA RANSBY I came into the social justice movements at the height of the repression of the Cold War period. . . . Organizations seeking civil rights, peace and justice had been crushed everywhere. . . . And although I discovered in those years that there was always a resistance movement , many people did indeed fall into silence. . . . But the one thing that could not be crushed was a burning desired of African Americans to be free. Anne Braden, 1999 In 1952, Ella Baker was elected president of the large New York City NAACP branch, becoming its first woman president. She had been active in the branch for several years, working with the youth council and several other projects, but her new post provided her with the latitude and authority to orchestrate some of the kinds of political campaigns she had long envisioned. After traveling around the country for two decades aiding grassroots groups to develop activist campaigns for change, she now had an opportunity to shape and direct such a movement in the heart of New York City. Her base of operations was Harlem, 32 Local Politics and Global Ideologies 33 where she had great experience and manifold ties with diverse groups of black and white political activists and progressive intellectuals. Actually, she moved branch headquarters from offices downtown to the heart of the black community in Harlem to be more in the thick of things. Baker led the New York City branch the way she thought all NAACP branches should function: She identified issues of concern to black people— ordinary working people as well as professionals—and involved as many members as possible in building direct-action campaigns to address those issues. She also worked hard to build coalitions with other groups in the city. In New York, unlike many smaller cities where the NAACP was the only civil rights organization in town, the black political scene was eclectic and contentious. But Baker was able to deal with the personalities and navigate the territorial rivalries of various organizations with finesse. Part of the key to her success was that she relished rather than resented other organizational involvement. Every action did not have to be carried out in the NAACP’s name. In fact, Baker maintained multiple organizational affiliations even as she presided over the New York branch. During 1952 and 1953, under Ella Baker’s leadership, the New York City NAACP branch built coalitions with other groups in the city and carried out aggressive campaigns focused primarily on school reform and desegregation and on police brutality.1 In the course of these campaigns, Baker employed the whole range of protest tactics she had taught others to utilize: sending public letters of protest, leading noisy street demonstrations , confronting the mayor in front of the news media, and even running for public office after temporarily taking off her NAACP hat. Baker’s photograph and her fiery words appeared regularly in New York City newspapers as she demanded quality public education for all New York students, along with active parental participation, and called for public accountability and fair treatment for people of color from the police. Often at the head of a crowd of supporters, acting in concert with other groups and individuals, Baker led the New York City NAACP into action alongside progressive whites and Puerto Ricans, the city’s secondlargest group of people of color. In her efforts at coalition building, Baker tried to avoid the divisive Cold War politics that defined the national scene during the early 1950s and threatened to infect the debates over local issues. While Baker continued to have regular contact with Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Gloster Current (her successor as director of branches, with whom she 34 Barbara Ransby had a civil but strained relationship), she tried to function as independently as possible. She contacted the executive officers regarding fundraising efforts, membership strategies, and incidents that occurred in the city that both the New York City branch and the national office might respond to. It took a conscious, continuous effort for Baker to carve out her own path in the very backyard of the national office. The personality conflicts and the tension between the national organization and local branches that created long-standing problems in the association were compounded, during the early...