"Anybody Could Be A Leader"

Ella Josephine Baker

By:Iswatu Townsend

[1903-1986]

    Ella Josephine Baker was born on in December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia. She was raised in Littleton, North Carolina. Her childhood was wonderful. Baker continued her education at Shaw University, graduating as valedictorian in 1927.

    She later moved to New York in search of employment. But instead, she found people suffering from being poor and having hard times from the Great Depression. In the 1930s she helped organize the Young Negroes Cooperative League, which was created to form groups that work together and that provides less-expensive goods and services to members. Baker also married T.J. Roberts in the 1930s. She later became Field Secretary and then National Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]'s many branches.

    Ella showed lots of courage because she co-founded the In Friendship organization to raise money for the Southern Civil Rights Movement. While working at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] she worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    She believed most strongly in kids because she left the SCLC in the 1960s to help kids get a better education. She helped students form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [also known as SNCC] to help them become better leaders. She gave these students ideas and she encouraged them to organize their own group. SNCC later contributed many people and ideas to the movement to end segregation.  Ella had many beliefs. She changed many people's lives because students became better leaders and more students considered nonviolence in their lives. Ella had some good and bad times in her life. Many people can learn from her example because she had good thoughts and ideas. She encouraged a lot of people to consider nonviolence. Some people thought that people like Dr. King could just be leaders, but she believed that everyone could be a leader.

    She later died on December 13, 1986 on her 83rd birthday. She went through a lot of pain and struggles, but she succeeded.  I believe that Ella was a good person and that it was wonderful that she believed in all people, and that anybody could be a leader.