Ella Josephine Baker, 1903-1986

Ella Josephine Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia. At the age of seven, following a race riot in which black shipyard workers were beaten, her mother took the family to her hometown, Littleton, North Carolina, and her father stayed in Norfolk to continue working on a steamship. Growing up, Baker listened to her maternal grandmother’s stories about slavery, slave revolts, and women in the old days. Learning first-hand about the oppression of black people has shaped her sense of social injustice.

After high school, Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as valedictorian of her class. In 1927, at 24, she moved to NYC, where she worked as a domestic and waitress before she got a job as an editorial assistant at the Negro National News. Living in NYC during the Harlem Renaissance, Baker’s point of view evolved into actions, and she began her life-long dedication to political activism.

In 1931, she became a member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL), which formed cooperatives that provided affordable services to its members. Soon, she was appointed the national director of the YNCL. She also taught classes on consumer education, African history, and labor history as part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration.

In 1938, Baker became active at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), first as a field secretary. Within two years, she became director of branches and the highest-ranking woman in the organization. Through this position, she put into practice her belief that social change occurs from the bottom up, and the success of an organization depends on the commitment of its members, not its leaders, emphasizing the importance of women and young people to its success. As its director, Baker traveled throughout the South to recruit new members, earning the people’s trust with her personalized approach, sleeping in their homes, and attending church services. Over time, she built a network of people who played a significant role in the struggle for civil rights in the South.

In 1946, at 43, Baker took custody of her niece and left her position at the NAACP but continued to be active as a volunteer at the New York branch. There, she mainly worked on the desegregation of schools and improving the education of black children.

When she was 54, she moved to Atlanta to establish and serve as the executive director of Martin Luther King’s new organization – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Its goal was to promote nonviolent actions to achieve racial justice and social progress. First, they organized education and church ceremonies to encourage people to register to vote. The campaign was not successful as hoped for, but it laid the foundations for local activist centers.

In 1960, following the Greensboro sit-ins, when black college students refused to leave a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter, Baker left the SCLC to assist the Greensboro Four. She organized a meeting at Shaw University, where she formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Under her guidance, the SNCC became one of the leading human rights organizations in the US, initiating some of the most successful nonviolent protests of the time. Including the Freedom Rides of 1961, when buses of civil rights activists rode through the segregated Southern states, and the Freedom Summer of 1964, when hundreds of volunteers arrived in Mississippi protesting against the intimidation and discrimination against registered black voters.

In addition to her work with the SNCC, Baker worked with the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), promoting social justice and interracial desegregation via the education of the southern white population. In 1964, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), served as its coordinator, and led its delegation to the National Democratic Party convention.

At the age of 64, Baker returned to NYC, continuing her fight for social justice for two more decades. She consulted various organizations, such as the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Third World Women’s Coordinating Committee. She remained a prominent figure in the fight for human rights until her death on her 83rd birthday.

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