Baker organized the conference that founded the SNCC at Shaw University.
From April 15-17, 1960, Ella Baker spearheaded the organization of the Student Leadership Conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, facilitating the birth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This conference united student activists dissatisfied with the pace of change in traditional structures like the NAACP. Under Baker’s guidance, SNCC embraced a philosophy of grassroots leadership and participatory democracy, which became the hallmark of the group, instrumental in sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration drives that characterized the civil rights activism of the 1960s.