Ella Jo Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia.
She developed a sense for social justice early in her life. As a girl
growing up in North Carolina, 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.
Ella Baker Center honors Ella's legacy of building justice and peace through grassroots action:
Books Not Bars fights to redirect California's resources away from youth incarceration and towards youth opportunities.
Green Collar Job Campaign works to ensure that the emerging green economy is strong enough to lift people out of poverty.
Soul of the City is our hands-on, hands-together campaign to create an Oakland that is safe, healthy, and balanced.
Baker studied at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. As a
student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair.
After graduating in 1927 as class valedictorian, she moved to New York
City and began joining social activist organizations. In 1930, she
joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose purpose was
to develop black economic power through collective planning. She also
involved herself with several women's organizations.
Ella Baker began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. She worked as a field secretary
and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946. Inspired
by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker
co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money to fight
against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South.
In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to help organize Martin Luther King's new
organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She
also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for
Citizenship.
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North
Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch
counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied
service. Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted
to assist the new student activists and organized a meeting at Shaw
University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From
that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee -- SNCC -- was born.
Adopting the Gandhian
theory of nonviolent direct action, SNCC members joined with activists
from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to organize in the 1961 Freedom Rides. In 1964 SNCC helped
create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national attention on
Mississippi's racism and to register black voters. With Ella Baker’s
guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates
for human rights in the country. Her influence was reflected in the
nickname she acquired: “Fundi,” a Swahili word meaning a person who
teaches a craft to the next generation.
Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight
for human and civil rights until her death on December 13, 1986, her
83rd birthday.
“The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence…” - Ella Jo Baker
