Baker, Ella, 1903-1986

Ella Baker was a behind-the-scene strategist in many of the American progressive movements of the 20th century. Baker's career as an activist, leader (a title she would never have used to identify herself) and grassroots community organizer spanned from the late 1920s to the time of her death in 1986. The projects, organizations and movements she worked for, directed, initiated, or supported included the consumer education movement via the conduit of the Young Negroes' Co-operative League (YNCL) during the Great Depression era of the 1930s; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in the 1950s and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s; along with some fifty other entities.

Ella Josephine Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia on December 13, 1903, the second of three children of Georgianna Ross, a school teacher, health care worker and mid-wife and Blake Baker a waiter on the ferry line between Norfolk and Washington. When she was eight years old, her family moved to Littleton, North Carolina where her mother grew up and her maternal relatives continued to live. At age 15, Baker became a high school student at Shaw University's boarding school and later went to the University she was valedictorian for both of her graduating classes. Following graduation in 1927 she moved to Harlem, which remained her home until her death on December 13, 1986. In 1937 Baker married T. J. Robinson after a 10-year courtship which began at Shaw while they were both students there.

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