Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 – December 13, 1986) was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, and Bob Moses, as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
First efforts (1930–1937)
Baker worked as editorial assistant at the Negro National News. In 1930, George Schuyler, a black journalist and anarchist (and later an arch-conservative), founded the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL). It sought to develop black economic power through collective networks. They conducted “conferences and trainings in the 1930s in their attempt to create a small, interlocking system of cooperative economic societies throughout the US” for black economic development. Having befriended Schuyler, Baker joined his group in 1931 and soon became its national director.
NAACP (1938–1953)
In 1946, Baker took in her niece Jackie, whose mother was unable to care for her. Due to her new responsibilities, Baker left her full-time position with the NAACP and began to serve as a volunteer. She soon joined the NAACP’s New York branch to work on local school desegregation and police brutality issues. She became its president in 1952. In this role, she supervised the field secretaries and coordinated the national office’s work with local groups. Baker’s top priority was to lessen the organization’s bureaucracy and give women more power in the organization; this included reducing Walter Francis White’s dominating role as executive secretary.[citation needed]
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957–1960)
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1960–1966)
Southern Conference Education Fund (1962–1967)
Final efforts (1968–1986)
In 1967 Baker returned to New York City, where she continued her activism. She later collaborated with Arthur Kinoy and others to form the Mass Party Organizing Committee, a socialist organization.[citation needed] In 1972 she traveled the country in support of the “Free Angela” campaign, demanding the release of activist and writer Angela Davis, who had been imprisoned on charges of kidnapping and murder in the Marin County Civic Center attacks.[citation needed] Davis was eventually acquitted.
- An appeal for grassroots involvement of people throughout society, while making their own decisions
- The minimization of (bureaucratic) hierarchy and the associated emphasis on expertise and professionalism as a basis for leadership
- A call for direct action as an answer to fear, isolation, and intellectual detachment
