oyegitana:

Baker differed with King and other SCLC leaders on questions besides nonviolence and the meaning of leadership in militant mass movements. Bernice Johnson Reagon has suggested that Baker’s worldview and political practice can best be defined as a type of radical humanism. It was radical, in that she advocated fundamental social transformation, and it was humanistic, because she envisioned that transformation coming about through a democratic, cooperative, and localized movement that valued the participation of each of its individual members. Baker’s unfaltering confidence in the common people was the bedrock of her political vision. It was with them that she felt the locus of power should reside.

Ransby, Barbara, “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement : A Radical Democratic Vision”