Nearly 60 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr posed a question that still haunts us. In his final book, published just a year before his death, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, he argued that we were standing at a crossroads: one path leading toward chaos – deepening poverty, violence, and repression – while the other required us to collectively choose and build community.

Too few of us answered his call. At times, we chose distraction, comfort and complacency. At others, we turned away from the violence this country inflicted on the world, allowing the corruption of those in power to harden and accumulate. We can blame politicians and corporations, or those who remained neutral – but the truth is, we all carry some level of responsibility.

And still, the challenge remains: are we ready to do what is necessary to build community? To protect one another? To stop outsourcing our power?

This Black History Month, we must go beyond the passive commemorations that have become commonplace in our culture. We need to go beyond the hashtags, curated quotes, safe tributes, and parades and learn about how change was actually made – and take responsibility for continuing it.

If we want a model for that responsibility, the activist Ella Baker is essential. Often working behind the scenes, she helped build some of the most important organizations of the civil rights movement. One of her most enduring contributions was her insistence on building strong people – so they would no longer need strong leaders.

Baker, who died in 1986, believed that people must organize where they are: in their neighborhoods, workplaces and schools. Not by waiting for charismatic saviors, but by developing leadership from below. She understood that young people and poor and working-class communities already possessed knowledge, strength and leadership – and that those capacities, when nurtured, could be mobilized for real social change.

That legacy is alive today in organizations like Students Deserve in Los Angeles. This youth-led group has organized students across race to win historic victories, including a $30m reduction to school police funding and the reinvestment of those resources into a Black Student Achievement Plan. These gains were not granted out........

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