Here is some information on Ella Baker. She is younger than my grandmothers and great aunts and I am not sure they would have entirely liked her — although I believe my aunt Helen, the librarian, would have done.
“Don’t tell anyone, Z, but I am a Socialist. I know, it is problematic. In 1917 I went down to the docks in San Francisco to meet Rosa Luxemburg and she was so conservative, as it turned out. I know, yet I am still a Socialist.”
Old aunts, old artificers, stand me now and ever in good stead.
EDITED TO ADD: I forgot to make explicit an important connection here: Ella Baker is the Ella referred to in the title of Ella’s Song, by Bernice Johnson Reagon, which we have already heard sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 