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Ella Baker Cofounder of the Southern Christian leadership Conference
Ella Baker (1903−1986) was reared in Littleton, North Carolina, and educated at Shaw University in Raleigh. During the 1930s she worked as a community organizer in New York. She joined the NAACP staff in 1940 as a field secretary and served as director of branches from 1943 to 1946. Baker traveled throughout the South recruiting new members and registering voters.
Baker was an advisor for the Montgomery bus boycott; and, in 1957, she cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As executive director of SCLC, she organized the 1960 conference that created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Baker remained a key advisor, helping SNCC organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged Mississippi's all-white delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention. |