San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

  • Home
  • Espanol Home
  • Image Galleries
  • Back Issues
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Donate / Subscribe
  • Wall City

Ella Baker: Civil and human rights activist

February 23, 2021 by San Quentin News Contributor

Ella Baker, 1964

Ella Baker 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, Rosa Parks, and Bob Moses, whom she first mentored 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.

Baker has been called “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 not only of racism within American culture, but also of sexism within the civil rights movement.

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet
FollowFollow us

Filed Under: Featured, Prison Reform, Profiles Tagged With: Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Video

Made With Love At San Quentin State Prison The Last Mile Logo

  • Home
  • Espanol Home
  • Image Galleries
  • Back Issues
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Donate / Subscribe
  • Wall City

  • Featured
  • Recently Posted
  • Arts
  • Death Penalty
  • Education
  • Espanol
  • Legal
  • Most Read
  • Sports