ELLA BAKER
CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND TEACHER
Born December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, VA; died December 13, 1986, in New York City;.
Education: Shaw University, B.A., 1927
Mrs. Baker continued to fight for social justice and equality for the rest of her life. With her many years of experience as a protester and organizer, she gave her wise counsel to numerous organizations and causes, including the Third World Women’s Coordinating Committee and the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee. Her craft was being able to get and organize people to work together for social change. Gospel singer and historian Bernice Johnson Reagon wrote a song about her called “Ella’s Song,” which celebrates her role as “Fundi” to the American civil rights movement: “That which touches me most is that I had the chance to work with people / Passing on to others that which was passed on to me.”
Ella Bakekr 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).
Baker criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership; she promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the oppressed to understand their worlds and advocate for themselves. She realized this vision most fully in the 1960s as the primary advisor and strategist of the SNCC.Biographer Barbara Ransby calls Baker “one of the most important American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement”. She is known for her critiques of both racism in American culture and sexism in the civil rights movement.
Mrs.Baker passed away on December 13, 1986, on her eighty-third birthday in New York. Before her death, she was asked what had kept her going in her lifelong struggle against injustice. AS QUOTED IN MOVING THE MOUNTAIN, Baker answered in the spirit of a “FUNDI”: “I don’t claim to have a corner on an answer, but I believe that the struggle is eternal. Somebody else carries on.”
Her life and accomplishments were chronicled in the 1981 documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. “Fundi” was her nickname, which comes from a Swahili word that means a person who passes down a craft to the next generation.
ELLA BAKER WAS A DRIVING FORCE THA REINFORCED WHAT THE CIVIL RIGHTS WAS ALL ABOUT. She is and will always be remembered as a mother of the movement. An iconic legacy that helped to bridge the gaps and create the freedom we all have today.
Civil Rights accomplishments in calendar year order:
American West Indian News, editorial staff member, 1929–30; Negro National News, office manager and editorial assistant, 1932; Young Negroes’ Cooperative League, national director, c 1932–38; Works Progress Administration (WPA), consumer education project teacher,
Honors
- In 1984, Baker received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women.
- Her papers are held by the New York Public Library.
- In 1994, Baker was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
- In 1996, the Ella Baker for Human Rights, a nonprofit strategy and action center based in Oakland, California, was founded and named for her.
- The Ella Baker School in the Julia Richman Education Complex in New York City was founded in 1996.
- In 2003, The Ella Jo Baker Intentional Community Cooperative, a 15-unit co-housing community, began living together in a renovated house in Washington, DC.
- Ella Baker House, a community center that supports at-risk youth in Dorchester, Boston was created at some point before 2005
- In 2009, Baker was honored on a U. S. postage stamp
- In 2014, the University of California at Santa Barbara established a visiting professorship to honor Baker.
- In 2021 the former Woodrow Wilson Montessori School in Houston was renamed the Baker Montessori School.