Ray Stannard Baker
(1870–1946)
Journalist(NAACP)
He was known as a leading muckraking journalist. From 1899 to 1905, he was an associate editor of McClure’s, and from 1906 to 1915 he coedited American Magazine. As a muckraker, he reported on social and economic problems from a liberal perspective. After the Atlanta riot, he traveled throughout the South and North conducting interviews for Following the Color Line (1908), a groundbreaking book on race relations. Baker vacillated between the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and the NAACP. He joined the NAACP and attended meetings, but declined committee service. In his notebook, he revealed that he “instinctively” agreed with Washington’s “emphasis on duty and service” as a prerequisite for civil rights. Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Woodrow Wilson in 1940. In this letter, NAACP founder William Wallings asks for Baker’s support in convening a national conference on the Negro