Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 - December 13, 1986) was a leading African American civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s. She was a behind-the-scenes activist whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, including: W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1903 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... Motto: Crescas (Latin for, Thou shalt grow. ... is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ... New York, New York redirects here. ... Prominent figures of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. ... The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is one of the oldest and most influential hate organizations in the United States. ... Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (first known as Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration) is a civil rights organization founded in January 1957 by Martin Luther King Jr. ... Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC, pronounced snick) was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. ... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1903 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... is the 347th day of the year (348th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ... An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black) is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. ... Year 1930 (MCMXXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced ) (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was a civil rights activist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar, and socialist. ... For people and institutions etc. ... Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a prominent twentieth century African-American civil rights leader and founder of the first black labor union in the United States. ... Martin Luther King, Jr. ...

Early life and career

Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised by Georgiana and Blake Baker. When she was eight, her family moved to her mother's hometown of Littleton in rural North Carolina. As a girl, Baker listened to her grandmother tell stories about slave revolts. As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner. Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as class valedictorian in 1927at the age of 24. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. After graduating, she moved to New York City.^[1] During 1929 - 1930 she was an editorial staff member of the American West Indian News, going on to take the position of editorial assistant at the Negro National News. In 1930 George Schuyler, then a black journalist and anarchist (and later an arch-conservative), founded the Young Negroes' Cooperative League (YNCL), which sought to develop black economic power through collective planning. Having befriended Schuyler, Baker joined in 1931 and soon became the group’s national director.^[2] Motto: Crescas (Latin for, Thou shalt grow. ... Official language(s) English Capital Raleigh Largest city Charlotte Largest metro area Charlotte metro area Area  Ranked 28th  - Total 53,865 sq mi (139,509 km²)  - Width 150 miles (240 km)  - Length 560[1] miles (900 km)  - % water 9. ... Shaw University is a historically black college located in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. It offers several undergraduate degrees in the fine and liberal arts as well as natural science, and also degrees in allied health, business, public administration, education and computer science. ... For other uses of this name, see Raleigh. ... Year 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1930 (MCMXXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

She also worked for the Worker's Education Project of the Works Progress Administration, where she taught courses in consumer education, labor history and African history. Baker immersed herself in the cultural and political milieu of Harlem in the 1930s. She protested Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and supported the campaign to free the Scottsboro defendants, a group of young black men wrongfully accused of rape in Alabama. She also founded the Negro History Club at the Harlem Library and regularly attended lectures and meetings at the YWCA. She befriended the future scholar and activist, John Henrik Clark and the future writer and civil rights lawyer, Pauli Murray, and many others who would become lifelong friends.^[3] WPA Graphic The Works Progress Administration (later Work Projects Administration, abbreviated WPA), was created on May 6, 1935 by Presidential order (Congress funded it annually but did not set it up). ... For other uses, see Harlem (disambiguation). ... Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was an American civil rights advocate, feminist, lawyer, poet, teacher and ordained minister. ...

Work with prominent organizations

NAACP (1938-1953)

In 1938 she began her long association with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Baker was hired in 1941 as a field secretary. She traveled widely, especially in the South, recruiting members, raising money, and organizing local campaigns. She was named director of branches in 1942, making her the highest ranking woman in the organization. She was an outspoken woman with a strong belief in egalitarian ideals. She pushed the organization to decentralize its leadership structure and to aid its membership in more activist campaigns on the local level. She especially stressed the importance of young people and women in the organization. Baker formed a network of people in the south who would go on to be important for the fight for civil rights. Whereas some organizers tended to talk down to rural southerners, Baker’s ability to treat everyone with respect helped her in her recruiting. Baker fought to make the NAACP more democratic and in tune with the needs of the people. She tried to find a balance between voicing her concerns and maintaining a unified front. When the opportunity arose in 1946 to return to New York City to care for her niece, she left her position with the national association, but remained a volunteer. She soon joined the New York branch of the NAACP to work on school desegregation and police brutality issues, and became its president in 1954. She resigned in 1953 to run unsuccessfully for the New York City Council on the Liberal Party ticket.^[4] Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, generally pronounced as EN Double AY SEE PEE) is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. ... For other uses, see 1941 (disambiguation). ... Year 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link will display the full 1942 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... New York City Hall The New York City Council is the lawmaking body of the City of New York. ...

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957-1960)

In January 1957, Baker went to Atlanta, Georgia to attend a conference aimed at developing a new regional organization to build on the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After a second conference in February, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed. The conference’s first project was the Crusade for Citizenship, a voter registration campaign. Baker was hired as the first staffperson for the new organization. Along with Bayard Rustin, one of her close allies, she was co-organizer of the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage which brought thousands of activists to Washington D.C. Because she was not a man or a minister, she was not seriously considered for the post of executive director, but she worked with the SCLC ministers to hire Reverend John Tilley in that capacity. Baker worked closely with southern civil rights activists in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi and was highly respected for her organizing abilities. She helped initiate voter registration campaigns and identify other local grievances. After Tilley resigned, she remained in Atlanta for two and a half years as interim executive director of the SCLC until the post was taken up by Wyatt Tee Walker in April 1960.^[5] Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ... Atlanta redirects here. ... The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, intended to oppose the citys policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. ... The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Logo. ... Voter registration is the shit in some democracies for citizens to check in with some central registry before being allowed to vote in elections. ... Bayard Rustin at news briefing on the Civil Rights March on Washington, August 27, 1963 Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an African-American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier and principal organizer of the... John Vincent Tilley (June 13, 1941—December 18, 2005) was a British Labour politician. ... Wyatt Tee Walker (born 1929) was a United States black civil rights leader. ... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1960-1962)

That same year, on the heels of regional desegregation sit-ins led by black college students, Baker persuaded the SCLC to invite southern university students to the Southwide Youth Leadership Conference at Shaw University on Easter weekend. At this meeting the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed. Following the conference Baker resigned from the SCLC and began a long and intimate relationship with SNCC. Along with Howard Zinn, Baker was one of SNCC's highly revered adult advisors. It was with Baker’s help that SNCC (along with Congress of Racial Equality) coordinated the region-wide freedom rides of 1961 and began to work closely with black sharecroppers and others throughout the South. Ella Baker insisted that "strong people don't need strong leaders," and criticized the notion of a single charismatic leader at the helm of movements for social change. She also argued that "people under the heel," referring to the most oppressed sectors of any community, "had to be the ones to decide what action they were going to take to get (out) from under their oppression." She was a teacher and mentor to the young people of SNCC, highly influencing the thinking of such important figures as Julian Bond, Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Curtis Muhammad, Bob Moses, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who wrote a song in Baker's honor, called "Ella's Song." Through SNCC, Baker’s ideas of group-centered leadership and the need for radical democratic social change spread throughout the student movements of the 1960s. Her ideas influenced the philosophy of participatory democracy put forth by Students for a Democratic Society, the major antiwar group of the day. These ideas also influenced a wide range of radical and progressive groups that would form in the 60s and 70s.^[6] The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC, pronounced snick) was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. ... Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922) is an American historian, political scientist, social critic, activist and playwright, best known as author of the bestseller[5] , A Peoples History of the United States. ... “CORE” redirects here. ... The Freedom Rides were a series of nonviolent, direct demonstrations performed in 1961 as part of the U.S. civil rights movement. ... Julian Bond, 2005 Horace Julian Bond (born January 14, 1940) is an American leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. ... Diane Judith Nash (born May 15, 1938 in Chicago) is a founder of the SNCC, a key force in the American civil rights movement. ... Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. ... Bob Moses, community organizer and educator associated with the US civil rights movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. ... Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon (born October 4, 1942) is a singer, composer, scholar, and social activist, who founded the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973. ...

Southern Conference Education Fund (1962-1967)

From 1962 to 1967 Baker worked on the staff of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), which aimed to help black and white people work together for social justice. In SCEF Baker worked closely with her friend, longtime white anti-racist activist Anne Braden, who had been accused of being a communist during the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Baker viewed socialism as a more humane alternative to capitalism but she had mixed feelings about communism. Still, she became a staunch defender of Anne Braden and her husband Carl and encouraged SNCC to reject red-baiting because she viewed it as divisive and unfair. During the 1960s Baker participated in a speaking tour and co-hosted several meetings on the importance of linking civil rights and civil liberties.^[7] Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... Anne Braden (July 28, 1924 - March 6, 2006) was a white American civil rights activist tried for sedition as a result of her and her husband buying a house in an all-white neighborhood and reselling it to a black family. ... HUAC hearings The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC or HCUA,[1] 1938–1975) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. ...

In 1964 she helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as an alternative to the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party. She worked as the coordinator of the Washington office of the MFDP and accompanied a delegation of the MFDP to the National Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1964. The group's aim was to challenge the national party to affirm the rights of African Americans to participate in party elections in the South. When MFDP delegates challenge the pro-segregationist, all-white official delegation, a major conflict ensued. The MFDP delegation was not seated, but their influence on the Democratic Party helped to elect many black leaders in Mississippi and forced a rule change to allow women and minorities to sit as delegates at the Democratic National Convention.^[8] Also Nintendo emulator: 1964 (emulator). ... The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was an American political party created in the state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement. ... Featured at the Democratic National Convention are speeches by prominent party figures. ...

Final years

That same year, Ella Baker returned to New York, where she continued her activism. She later collaborated with Arthur Kinoy and others to form the Mass Party Organizing Committee, a socialist organization. In 1972 she traveled the country in support of the "Free Angela" campaign demanding the release of Angela Davis. She lent her voice to the Puerto Rican independence movement, spoke out against apartheid in South Africa and allied herself with a number of women's groups, including the Third World Women's Alliance and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She remained an activist until her death in 1986.^[9] This article is about the state. ... Year 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American socialist organizer, professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). ... A segregated beach in South Africa, 1982. ... Founded in 1915, the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is the oldest womens peace organization in the world. ... Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ...

It is widely written that Ella Baker and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other SCLC members, differed in opinion and philosophy. She once claimed that the "movement made Martin, and not Martin the movement." Another speech she made, in which she urged activists to take control of the movement themselves, rather than rely on a leader with "heavy feet of clay," was widely interpreted as a denunciation of King. “Martin Luther King” redirects here. ...

Ella Baker was a notoriously private person. People close to her did not know that she was married for twenty years.^[10] She left no personal diaries.

Quotations

• "Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”^[11]

Notes

1. ^ Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: a Radical Democratic Vision (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 13-63.
2. ^ Johnson, Cedric Kwesi. A Woman of Influence, In These Times. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
3. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 64-104.
4. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 105-158.
5. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 170-175.
6. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 239-272.
7. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 209-238, 273-328.
8. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 330-344.
9. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 344-374.
10. ^ Ransby, Ella Baker, pp. 101-103.
11. ^ Collins, Gail (September 22, 2007), "The Women Behind the Men", The New York Times, <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/opinion/22collins.html?em&ex=1190606400&en=a20518e610336452&ei=5087%0A>

References

• S. G. O’Malley, "Baker, Ella Josephine," American National Biography Online (2000).
• G. J. Barker Benfield and Catherine Clinton, eds., Portraits of American Women (1991).
• Ellen Cantarow and Susan O'Malley, Moving the Mountain: Women Working for Social Change (1980).
• Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (John Wiley & Sons, 1998).
• Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003) ISBN 0-8078-2778-9

See also

• American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
• Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Martin Luther King is perhaps most famous for his I Have a Dream speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom This article is about the civil rights movement following the Brown v. ... The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a non-profit strategy and action center based in Oakland, CA. The stated aim of the center is to work for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America. ...

External links

• Biographical piece as part of SNCC-People
• The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
• Ella J. Baker Biography NC State University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Ella Baker - Freedom Bound by Joanne Grant
• Ella Baker: Information from Answers.com