Ella Baker advised the young activists and helped connect them to older activists, but she also warned the students not to be manipulated or dominated by the movement’s established leaders. “This inclination toward group-centered leadership,” she said, “rather than toward a leader-centered group pattern of organization, was refreshing indeed to those of the older group who bear the scars of the battle, the frustrations and the disillusionment that come when the prophetic leader turns out to have heavy feet of clay.”
