Ella Baker
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Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 - December 13, 1986) was an African American Civil Rights activist. She organized the 1960 meeting out of which the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) arose and was a coordinator of the Freedom Riders.
Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia. When she was seven, her family moved to rural North Carolina. She attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating in 1927, and moved to New York City. She had wanted to undertake graduate studies in sociology, but, as it was the Great Depression, she had to find work to support herself. She refused to teach, which at the time was one of the few professions open to black women. She instead took waitressing and factory jobs. 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 she became involved in consumer advocacy, joining the Young Negroes' Cooperative League consumer cooperative, which sought to develop black economic power through collective planning. She soon became the group’s national director. She also worked for the Works Progress Administration, where she brought people together to engage in collective buying.
In 1938 she began her long association with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her first position with the group was as a field organizer. She traveled widely, especially in the South, recruiting members, raising money, and organizing local campaigns. She soon became NAACP field secretary and in 1943 was named director of branches. 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 often clashed with the male ministers in the leadership, who found her firmness unfeminine. 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 became its president in 1952. She resigned in 1953 to run unsuccessfully for the New York City Council on the Liberal party ticket.
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 worked with executive director Reverend John Tilley to set up voter clinics and organize social action committees in southern communities. 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.
That same year, 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 went to work with SNCC. It was with Baker’s help that SNCC led the successful sit-ins of 1960 and the freedom rides of 1961. Through SNCC, Baker’s ideas spread throughout the student movements of the 1960s. Her ideas on group-centered organizing and direct action largely influenced the philosophy of participatory democracy put forth by Students for a Democratic Society. These ideas also influenced a wide range of radical and progressive groups that would form in the 60s and 70s.
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.
In 1964 she helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as an alternative to the regular Democratic Party in Mississippi. The influence of the MFDP 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.
That same year, she returned to New York, where she remained active in community organizing until her death in 1986.
See also
American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)Reference
- O’Malley, S. G. Baker, Ella Josephine. American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000.
External links
- [Biographical piece as part of SNCC-People]
- [The Ella Baker Centre 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]
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