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In her important 1997 publication, Rhetoric Retold, Cheryl Glenn reminds us that the re-gendering of rhetoric has historically referred to revisiting the role of women in rhetoric, uncovering and collecting their rhetorical artifacts, and/or identifying and defining more feminist perspectives on rhetoric (1). While I support this view whole-heartedly, my discussion here diverges from it in that it introduces and then dispels, the notion of a quasi-regendered rhetoric in the discourse of four of civil rights activists and organizer, Ella Baker’s former male students-Timothy Jenkins, Robert Moses, John Lewis, and Bernard LaFayette, Jr.- and their post-movement applications of her principles of invitational group-centered leadership. I initially offer their rhetoric as examples of quasi-regendering to offset the criticism that the theory of invitational rhetoric is gender-specific. I reason, in part, that since regendering has historically resulted in the inclusion of women’s voices and perspectives into traditional persuasive rhetoric when the rhetoric is non-traditionally invitational, a reverse inclusion must occur if critics are right. That is to say, regendered invitational rhetoric must make room for masculine discourse and perspectives. I’ll say more about this later.
I further suggest that although the concepts these men learned from Baker were altogether steeped in what we now refer to as invitational rhetoric, they are also inextricably tied to a primary objective of the Civil Rights Movement, the commitment to nonviolence, which was Martin Luther King, Jr’s perceived pathway to attaining the beloved community. Contrary to several critical responses, Foss and Griffin are clear they have never specifically claimed that the dominant persuasive rhetoric instigates violence; instead, they see it as a way of devaluing audience members who have differing viewpoints. My linkage of invitational group-centered rhetoric to nonviolence does not resolve this point of contention but, it does posit invitational rhetoric as a more acceptable tool for conflict resolution than persuasive rhetoric, in some situations, though not all, as Foss and Griffin have stressed, and, hopefully, will give their critics pause for further consideration.
Additionally, based upon my research of the rhetoric and careers of these former Baker students, all of whom have achieved a notable amount of success since being mentored by her during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, and with reliance upon the scholarship of Jensen and Hammerback, Joshua Gunn, Bone, Griffin and Sholz, Lozano-Reich and Cloud, and Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffin, and others, I share how the former students have applied Baker’s invitational group-centered principles in their various vocations and avocations.
Timothy Jenkins
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I begin with the rhetoric of human interest attorney and professor, Timothy L. Jenkins.
As I shared in a publication earlier this year, Baker taught and modeled this idea that teaching and learning are reciprocal, that is; that every student, every audience member, has something to offer, just as the teacher-rhetor does. Decades later, Foss and Griffin have undergirded Baker’s philosophy through their proposal of an invitational setting where any person who wants to initiate a speech act has every right to do so (3). In a personal interview with me last month, Timothy Jenkins expounded upon his successful application of reciprocity in rhetorical settings. He stated, “Ella Baker’s ability to listen patiently and to respond with positive confirmations of understanding still assists me in not only hearing but acknowledging the Other’s point of view, whether I agree or not” (Personal interview) (4).
Robert P. Moses
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Without a doubt, Robert “Bob” Moses agrees with Jenkins. As the lead organizer of Freedom Summer of 1964, Moses’ influence in the CRM has never been questioned. Today, he views his active stance against inequities in education as a continuation of the struggle. As founder of the Algebra Project, a group-centered model for teaching mathematics in certain cities, both here and abroad, Moses still employs Baker’s principles of invitational group-centeredness in his classes, as do Professors David Novak and Brent Bonine, and others, including myself. In his Harvard Educational Review article titled “The Algebra Project: Organizing in the Spirit of Ella” Moses bestows credit upon his mentor for the lessons that she taught on, as Foss and Griffin later defined them, “imminent value and self-determination.” (6) Moses said, “Just as her spirit, consciousness, and teaching infused the Mississippi Movement, they permeated The Algebra Project from its inception” (Moses et. al, The Algebra Project) (7). Reflective of the group-centered training he received from Baker, Moses said in a 2011 interview (NYU historian Robert Cohen), “The only way we’re going to break through this issue of education is when, from the kids themselves, we get [their] voices...[then] the nation can understand and hear.” (5)
John Lewis
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My last two rhetorical figures are John Lewis and Bernard Lafayette, Jr. Congressman John Lewis, who is often referred to as the conscience of the U.S. Congress, speaks admiringly of Baker at every opportunity. He does so in his published work, Walking With the Wind: A Memoir on The Movement and in other settings, such as his numerous appearances on C-SPAN where he recaps Baker’s influence on her students’ lives.
Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr.
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Lewis’ good friend, Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr., is Professor-in-Residence at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and today’s leading expert on the implementation of nonviolent strategies in conflict resolution. LaFayette has relied on Baker’s group-centered principles since his movement days. He says, “Miss Baker became a guide for me...[because]she had the insight to develop ‘group-centered leaders’ rather than leader-centered groups...” (14) (8). As a widely recognized expert and facilitator of nonviolence training, he has applied this principle of group-centeredness while conducting Kingian nonviolence workshops for gang members in Chicago, prison inmates in California and Nigeria, schools in Oakland, CA and Tokyo, Japan, military personnel in Kunar, Afghanistan, and numerous other places. In Chapter 1 of his book, In Peace and Freedom, My Journey in Selma, LaFayette says, “The idea is to get the people themselves involved in solving their problems... It’s only when the people themselves decide they are going to participate [that they are successful] in helping to bring about the change.”
Additionally significant, LaFayette and Lewis have applied Baker’s group-centered principles to their primary passion- their continuing commitment to nonviolence. When observed through the sensitive lens of Joshua Gunn in his scholastic achievement, “For the Love of Rhetoric, with Continual Reference to Kenny and Dolly,” this application adds credence to my second suggestion-that there is a link between invitational rhetoric and King’s beloved community. In his article, Gunn assists in establishing this link in that he posits Foss and Griffin’s invitational rhetoric as a somewhat coded and ephemeral invitation to love—an invitation to risk being accused of kitschiness by some critics; to risk, as Gunn says, stepping into the “shit and bullshit” of being labeled a non-scholarly idealist or, in King’s case, a dreamer; to get to what Kelly Oliver views as the original intent of rhetoric: human connectedness; not through persuasion, but through love. As a point of clarification, Gunn does not see Foss and Griffin’s coded ephemeralness as a negative, but as an incomplete. Further study of this link just may reveal that Lafayette’s, Lewis’s, and other activists’ achievement of King’s beloved community could be or, at the very least, could have been the outcome; because this suggestion, in my view, supports Foss’ and Griffin’s claim that invitational rhetoric is not a gendered concept. I add, it is not a quasi-regendered concept, regardless of how I presented it earlier. But, as Gunn further suggests, invitational rhetoric is a human concept where, through love, all humans are given equal voice and value. As the discourse of these four men has substantiated, they, like all of Baker’s students, both male and female, were always afforded this right, just as all audience participants are afforded it in Foss and Griffin’s theory. Thus, in invitational rhetorical settings, as in group-centered settings, the need for reverse inclusion, that is, quasi-regendering, is, in the end, an unnecessary impossibility...because it is illusory.
1. Swearingen, C. Jan. Book Review, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from
Antiquity to the Renaissance.
2. Jenkins, Timothy L. “Birthday Song to Ella Baker.” email.
3. Foss, Sonja K. and Cindy L. Griffin. “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an
Invitational Rhetoric.
4. Jenkins, Timothy L. Personal Interview. 27 September 2014 ASALH Convention,
Memphis, TN.
5. Moses, Robert Parris. Youtube, Interview with Robert Cohen 5 May 2011.
6. Sonja A. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an
Invitational Rhetoric,” in Communication Monographs 62 (March 1995): 5.
7. Moses, Robert P, Mieko Kamii, Susan McAllister Swap, and Jeffrey Howard. “The
Algebra Project: Organizing in the Spirit of Ella.” Harvard Educational Review.
59, 4. Nov. 1989. 424.
8. Novak, David and Brent Bonine. “Offering Invitational Rhetoric in Communication
Courses.” Communication Teacher 23,1. January 2009. 11-14.
9. Gunn, Joshua. “For the Love of Rhetoric, with Continual Reference to Kenny and
Dolly.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 94:2 May 2008. 131-55.