Ella baker

b. 1903

Norfolk, Virginia

Activist, organizer

Ella Baker, largely missing from history books and lessons, is the reason why praised organizations and operations of the '60s existed. A behind-the-scenes luminary, Baker organized actions like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Freedom Rides of 1961.

Baker's advocacy started early, simply from hearing her once enslaved grandmother's stories. She graduated from Shaw University and moved to New York to confront the new wave of racism in Jim Crown laws.

She joined the NAACP in 1940, starting as a field secretary, then moved to multiple branch director roles until 1946.

After that, she moved to Atlanta and worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

In 1960 she hosted a conference with various sit-in leaders to develop and ideate future tactics for fighting Jim Crow segregation. As negligible as it seemed at the time, this meeting was the catalyst for Baker to create and found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Additionally, along with help from other organizations like, CORE, Baker organized the Freedom Rides of 1961.

In the following decades, Baker dedicated her time to de-segregation efforts and other campaigns, like Free Angela and the Southern Conference Education Fund.

Work cited: “Who Was Ella Baker?” Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, https://ellabakercenter.org/who-was-ella-baker/.