Lesley Rompalo
WGS 222
11/5/13
Biography: Ella Baker
Ella Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia on December 13th, 1903. Her father was
a ferryboat waiter and her mother was a teacher. Although she was born in Virginia, she
grew up in North Carolina. Her family was very important to her. Her mother,
Georgianna, was an outspoken and proud woman. Baker’s grandmother also had a
profound affect on her. Her grandmother was born a slave and would tell Baker stories
about growing up in slavery.
Baker attended Shaw University in North Carolina. She graduated the
valedictorian of her class in 1927. After graduation, she moved to New York City to
pursue a career. She worked a number of jobs in the city like waitressing, journalism, and
factory work. In New York she went to all the political meetings she could attend to get a
sense of how politics works and what was happening at the time.
In 1932 she founded the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL). The
YNCL set up cooperatives so neighborhoods would have affordable food and the
cooperatives allowed the community to directly contribute and make decisions. Baker
struggled hard for economic freedom, saying “People cannot be free until there is enough
work in this land to give everybody a job.” The YNCL was started during the Great
Depression when there were little jobs, especially for black men and women. She also
became involved with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) by teaching consumer
education for three years.
In 1942 she became the field secretary for the NAACP. She traveled for many
months of the year and organized leadership-training conferences. In 1943 she became
the director for her branch of the NAACP but three years later she resigned because her
frustration at the bureaucratic approach of the NAACP. In her absence she married
Thomas Roberts and began to look after her eight-year-old niece. In 1954 she returned to
the NAACP and became the president of the New York City branch.
In the late 40s and 50s, Baker worked to desegregate New York City public
schools by working with the New York Urban League. She also founded a group, In
Friendship, that’s goal was to desegregate the schools of the South. Starting in 1957,
Baker worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) for two years.
She organized many sit-ins for students during her time at the SCLC. Her time in a
leadership role in the SCLC could be tense sometimes. Her vision of the SCLC was a
people-centered one that worked on a group dynamic, rather than the activity centered
method that the SCLC used.
Baker also put a lot of time into the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), started at Shaw University. The SNCC primarily used sit-ins as a form of
protest against violence. SNCC was also very vocal about the Vietnam War and held
many protests against it. The SNCC helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party (MFDP) in 1964. The MFDP challenged the segregationist attitudes of the
Mississippi delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Eventually, the Mississippi
Democratic Party guaranteed the inclusion of women and blacks in delegations.
Ella Baker spent her later years advising many organizations devoted to civil
rights and non-violence. She created a profound impact on the civil rights movement and
the peace movement. She died on December 13th, 1986 in New York City.
Bibliography
"Baker, Ella Josephine." The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. Ed. Kenneth T.
Jackson, Karen Markoe, and Arnold Markoe. Vol. 2: 1986-1990. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. 55-57. Biography In Context. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.
"Ella Baker." Contemporary Black Biography. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 1993. Biography In
Context. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.
"Ella Baker." Notable Black American Women. Gale, 1992. Biography In Context. Web.
4 Nov. 2013.
"Ella Josephine Baker." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Vol. 18. Detroit: Gale,
1998. Biography In Context. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.
Grant, Joanne. "Ella Baker." Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History.
Gale, 2006. Biography In Context. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.
"Who Was Ella Baker?" Ella Baker Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.