Ella Baker

Alongside her cooperative work, Baker joined and helped lead numerous Harlem organizations, including discussion groups, relief committees, and campaigns against police brutality and unemployment.[7][10] She forged ties with figures in the Black left, women’s organizations, and church circles, learning to navigate ideological differences while keeping focus on concrete community needs.

These New York years were formative. As the New York Public Library later documented, Baker’s experiences in Depression‑era Harlem taught her that sustainable change required both structural critique and careful cultivation of local leadership.[15] She grew increasingly skeptical of the "great man" theory of leadership, having seen how charismatic personalities could overshadow grassroots voices and how centralized organizations could become disconnected from the people they claimed to represent.

Work with the NAACP

By the late 1930s, Baker’s reputation as a skilled grassroots organizer brought her into the orbit of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She began working informally with the organization around 1938 and, in 1940, officially joined the staff as a field secretary.[3][6][13]

In this position, Baker traveled extensively across the South, visiting small towns and rural communities to recruit members, raise funds, and help build NAACP branches.[3][4] She listened carefully to the concerns of sharecroppers, domestic workers, teachers, and small business owners, encouraging them to see themselves as political actors rather than passive beneficiaries of outside leadership.

Her approach emphasized "group‑centered" leadership: she believed that the strength of the NAACP lay in its local branches and that the national office should support, not dominate, grassroots initiatives.[16] Baker often encouraged branch members to take on responsibilities, speak in meetings, and develop campaigns responding to local conditions.

In January 1943, Baker was promoted to director of branches, making her one of the highest‑ranking women in the organization.[3][4][13] She oversaw the development and coordination of hundreds of local chapters, organizing membership drives and trainings and mediating conflicts between national officers and local activists.

Her tenure coincided with World War II and the "Double V" campaign—victory against fascism abroad and racism at home. Baker worked to ensure that NAACP branches could channel wartime grievances into organized demands for anti‑lynching laws, fair employment, and voting rights.[4]

Despite her effectiveness, Baker faced challenges within the NAACP, including resource limitations and tensions with leaders wary of her insistence on democratizing internal structures. In 1946, she left her staff position but continued to work with the organization as a volunteer and local leader in New York.[3][13] Her experience reinforced her conviction that national civil rights bodies needed to be accountable to their members, a theme that would reappear throughout her career.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

In the mid‑1950s, the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott elevated the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence and sparked efforts to build a regional organization of Black churches and ministers. Baker, with her extensive organizing experience, was drawn into this process.

In 1957, she joined with King and other leaders—reportedly as the only woman present—to help found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).[4][13] On February 14, 1957, SCLC was formally established, and Baker soon became the organization’s first full‑time executive director.[3][16]

As executive director, Baker handled a wide range of responsibilities: drafting organizational plans, coordinating communications between local campaigns and the Atlanta headquarters, and helping to design workshops in nonviolent protest and community organizing. She pushed the SCLC to move beyond episodic protests and to invest in long‑term, community‑based work.

Baker’s relationship with SCLC leadership was complex. She shared the goal of challenging segregation but was wary of leadership structures centered almost exclusively on male clergy and charismatic speaking. She advocated that SCLC support local movements and lay activists, not just pastors, and that decisions be made collectively.[16]

Her experience with SCLC confirmed both the potential and limitations of church‑centered organizing. While the organization provided important moral authority and helped coordinate campaigns, Baker felt it often underutilized the talents of women and young people. This critique would become central to her involvement in student activism.

Founding of SNCC and Major Movement Contributions

The sit‑in movement that erupted in February 1960, beginning with the Greensboro Woolworth’s protest, electrified the South and drew thousands of students into direct action.[4][3] Baker, then still associated with SCLC and based in Atlanta, recognized that these young activists needed their own autonomous structure.

She organized a Student Leadership Conference at her alma mater, Shaw University, in Raleigh, North Carolina, held April 15–17, 1960.[3][4][12] At this meeting, students from across the South debated strategy and organizational form, ultimately deciding to create the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Baker played a crucial role as advisor and facilitator. She urged the students not to become a youth auxiliary of existing organizations but to form an independent body that would remain accountable to grassroots communities.[12][13] Her emphasis on "group‑centered leadership" and participatory democracy deeply influenced SNCC’s structure and culture.

Throughout the 1960s, Baker continued to work closely with SNCC. She advised campaigns such as the Freedom Rides, voter‑registration drives in Mississippi and Alabama, and the 1964 Freedom Summer project.[3][10][13] She supported the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the state’s all‑white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and exposed the exclusion of Black voters from formal politics.[13]

Baker also helped link SNCC activists to older community networks and to broader human‑rights struggles. She encouraged them to see their work as part of a long tradition of Black resistance, rather than as an isolated youth rebellion. Her behind‑the‑scenes presence—organizing meetings, offering strategic counsel, and mediating internal disputes—earned her the affectionate description among some activists as the "Fundi," a Swahili term for one who teaches the craft.[3]

The broader civil rights movement achieved major legislative victories during this period. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed on July 2, 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed on August 6, 1965, reflected pressures generated by campaigns in which Baker was deeply involved.[6][13] While she did not focus on lobbying or court strategy, her work building resilient grassroots organizations helped create the conditions under which such laws became politically unavoidable.

Later Activism and Human Rights Work

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Baker continued her activism even as the classical civil rights era evolved into broader Black freedom struggles. She maintained close ties with former SNCC organizers and supported campaigns addressing economic justice, political repression, and international solidarity.

She allied herself with movements against apartheid in South Africa, with efforts supporting Puerto Rican independence, and with organizations such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Domestically, she remained engaged with prison reform initiatives and community campaigns challenging police brutality and economic disinvestment.[10][11] Her activism in this period demonstrated that she understood civil rights not as a closed historical chapter but as part of a broader human‑rights struggle that had to address imperialism, gender inequality, and class oppression.