Ella Baker Quotes
Give light and people will find the way.
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
The E. W. Scripps Newspapers hired Magee and adopted the motto for their entire newspaper chain. There are some who claim that it was Dante who originated the motto. Actually, he may have inspired it. In Purgatory he wrote, “Thou didst as one who passing through the night bears a light behind, that profits not himself but makes those who follow wise.” This was certainly not the motto but might have inspired Magee who was familiar with the Dante line.
Ella Josephine Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Rosa Parks, and Bob Moses, whom she first mentored as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
