Introduction

An advocate for grassroots participation and racial uplift of young participants of the Civil Rights Movement, Ella Josephine Baker (1903-1986) worked tirelessly behind the scenes, training college students to become leaders. Ella began her advocacy for civil and human rights on Shaw University’s Raleigh, North Carolina campus fighting school segregation. She continued to secure these freedoms for other disadvantaged people until her death in 1986. In her lifetime, Baker collaborated with Reverend Martin Luther King jr. with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, rallied for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and founded one of the most impactful organizations of the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This exhibit is dedicated to Ella Jo Baker, whose legacy runs deep within the Civil Rights Movement, but her name is often overlooked.