Download This Sample
This sample is exclusively for KidsKonnect members!
To download this worksheet, click the button below to signup for free (it only takes a minute) and you'll be brought right back to this page to start the download!
Sign Me Up
Table of Contents
Ella Baker was a well-known civil rights activist of African descent. She was regarded as a Black hero after participating in the Freedom Movement, inspiring other emerging leaders. She notably advocated for the oppressed while being the primary advisor and strategist of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In addition to racism, she criticized sexism in the civil rights movement.
See the fact file below for more information on Ella Baker, or alternatively, you can download our 23-page Ella Baker worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.
Key Facts & Information
Ella Baker
- During her time, she was involved with some of the most influential organizations.
- She mentored other leaders, such as human rights activist Diane Nash, political activist Stokely Carmichael, and American educator Bob Moses.
- Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is an organization inspired by her legacy. The organization seeks to empower people who are frequently regarded as inferior by society, such as non-Whites and the poor.
- She believed that oppression could be ended if the oppressed knew what they could do and banded together to oppose violence.
- She despised elitism and believed that the fundamental principles of any social change organization are the commitment and hard work of every member, not the leader’s eloquence.
Early Life
- On December 13, 1903, she was born in Norfolk, Virginia, where she spent her first seven years.
- Her father, Blake Baker, worked on a steamship line and was frequently away. Georgiana, her mother, looked after them while earning extra money by taking in boarders.
- A race riot broke out in their city in 1910. Whites attacked African-American shipyard workers. This worried her mother, who moved them to her rural hometown near Littleton, North Carolina.
- Her grandmother, Josephine Elizabeth Ross, influenced her early on by telling her about slavery and how people escaped the oppressive society of the South.
- Her grandmother told her about the beatings and whippings she endured as an African-American who refused to marry the man chosen by her enslaver.
- She listened to her grandmother with interest and developed a sense of social injustice that African-Americans still faced.
- She studied at Shaw University, where she questioned the “unjust” university policies. She graduated with valedictorian honors in 1927 and relocated to New York City after graduation.
Early Practices of Activism
- In 1931, she joined the creation of collective networks to develop economic power for African-Americans by being a member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL) founded by journalist and anarchist George Schuyler.
- They held conferences and training sessions to establish small African-American societies across the United States. She quickly rose to the position of national director.
- She also taught consumer education, labor history, and African history for the Worker’s Education Project.
- She also protested the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and supported the Alabama campaign for the release of the Scottsboro defendants.
- She attended Young Women’s Christian Association lectures and meetings regularly.
- She founded the Harlem Library’s Negro History Club.
- In 1938, she married her college partner T. J. Roberts.
- Little information was collected about her private and marital status as she rarely discussed it. In the Civil Rights Movement, many women adopted her practice of dissemblance about personal lives.
- She advocated for social change through widespread local action.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- In December 1940, she became the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after joining it two years ago.
- With the responsibility came the need to travel extensively, particularly in the South, to recruit members, raise funds, and organize local chapters.
- While traveling for the NAACP, she was able to form positive relationships with many African-American people.
Director
- In 1943, she was promoted to director of its branches, making her the highest-ranking woman in the association.
- Her egalitarian viewpoint compelled the organization to decentralize its leadership structure so its members could conduct more local activist campaigns.
- As a director, she believed that those at the bottom of the organizational structure contributed more to its strength than those in higher positions.
- She also emphasized the importance of the organization’s youth and women.
President of the New York Branch
- In comparison to some northern organizers who tended to talk down on southerners, her ability to treat everyone with respect aided her in recruiting more members.
- She directed leadership conferences in several major cities, including Chicago and Atlanta, from 1944 to 1946.
- In 1946, she began serving the NAACP as a volunteer rather than a director because she had a new responsibility with Jackie, her niece, whose mother was not able to care for her.
- She quickly joined the New York branch to focus on issues relating to police brutality and school desegregation in her community.
- She became president in 1952, and her main priority was to reduce bureaucracy and empower women in the organization.
- In 1953, she gave up her position in the NAACP to run for the New York City Council under the Liberal Party, but the election did not go in her favor.
Civil Rights Movement
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
- In January 1957, she attended a conference in Atlanta to discuss forming a new regional organization.
- During the second conference, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed.
- She was one of three major organizers of the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, at which the SCLC made its public debut.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the first president of the SCLC and she was eventually hired as the SCLC’s first Associate Director, while Reverend John Tilley served as the organization’s first Executive Director.
- She assisted in the launch of voter registration campaigns by emphasizing the importance of voting.
- They did not achieve their objectives immediately, but it encouraged local activist groups to create a mass campaign for the vote across the South.
- After Tilley resigned, she took over as interim executive director. She remained in the position until Reverend Wyatt tee Walker took it over in April 1960.
- She worked for the SCLC for several years despite having no solid allies in the office.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
- She persuaded the SCLC to invite university students to the Southwide Youth Leadership Conference in 1960, where leaders would meet, assess their struggles, and plan future actions. At the same meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed.
- After the meeting, she resigned from the SCLC and began her journey with the SNCC, where she became known as its Godmother by being one of its highly revered adult advisors alongside Howard Zinn.
- It grew to be the most active organization in the Mississippi Delta, where oppression was common.
- In 1961, two wings of SNCC were formed according to her suggestion. One wing was for direct action, and the other was for voter registration.
- Together with the Congress of Racial Equality, they coordinated the 1961 regional Freedom Ride (CORE).
- She influenced many influential future leaders as a mentor to SNCC, including Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, and Bob Moses.
- In the 1960s, people became more aware of her ideas about group-centered leadership as well as the need for radical democratic social change.
- She assisted in the development of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964 as the African-American counterpart to the all-White Mississippi Democratic Party.
- She was its coordinator, and she accompanied an MFDP delegation to the National Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
- Even though the MFDP lost in the party elections, they still benefited from it as their influence on the Democratic Party later aided the election of many black leaders in Mississippi.
- It pushed the SNCC toward a “Black power” stance. However, due to her declining health, she had already withdrawn from the SNCC during this period.
Later Years
- She worked for the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF) from 1962 to 1967, intending to unite Blacks and Whites in the fight for social justice.
- While working in SCEF, she made a collaboration with Anne Braden, an American anti-racist activist who was said to be a communist according to the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. She defended Anne Braden and her husband, Carl.
- She returned to New York City in 1967 and continued her activism.
- She participated in an activity with Artur Kinoy and the socialist organization Mass Party Organizing Committee.
- She supported the “Free Angela” campaign in 1972, which demanded the release of activist and writer Angela Davis, who was eventually acquitted.
- She also supported Puerto Rico‘s independence movement and continued to be an activist until she passed away in her sleep while in Manhattan on December 13, 1986.
Ella Baker Worksheets
This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Ella Baker across 23 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Ella Baker worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Ella Baker, who was an African-American civil rights activist who was known for her influential efforts as a community organizer alongside fellow civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others.
Complete List of Included Worksheets
- Ella Baker Facts
- Who’s Ella Baker?
- Correct Match
- Lifelong Work
- What’s Next?
- Quotes From Ella
- True Or False
- Fellow Activists
- Two Terms
- Influential Leader
- Inspired By Baker
Why is Ella Baker so famous?
Ella Baker was a well-known civil rights activist of African descent. She was regarded as a Black hero after participating in the Freedom Movement, inspiring other emerging leaders. She notably advocated for the oppressed and became the primary advisor and strategist of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In addition to racism, she criticized sexism in the civil rights movement.
What are three interesting facts about Ella Baker?
She mentored other leaders, such as human rights activist Diane Nash, political activist Stokely Carmichael, and American educator Bob Moses.
She believed that oppression could be ended if the oppressed knew what they could do and banded together to oppose violence.
She despised elitism and believed that the fundamental principles of any social change organization are the commitment and hard work of every member, not the leader’s eloquence.
Why is Ella Baker known as the mother of the Civil Rights Movement?
She was one of three major organizers of the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, at which the SCLC made its public debut. She was eventually hired as the SCLC’s first Associate Director.
Did Ella Baker work with Martin Luther King?
Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the first president of the SCLC and she was eventually hired as the SCLC’s first Associate Director, while Reverend John Tilley served as the organization’s first Executive Director.
Did Ella Baker face discrimination?
She was regarded as a Black hero after participating in the Freedom Movement, inspiring other emerging leaders. In addition to racism, she criticized sexism in the civil rights movement.
Link/cite this page
If you reference any of the content on this page on your own website, please use the code below to cite this page as the original source.
Link will appear as Ella Baker Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, February 5, 2019
Use With Any Curriculum
These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.