Biography

Ella Baker was born on December 13, 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. She was married to Thomas J. "Bob" Roberts. She died on December 13, 1986 in New York, New York, USA.

Ella died in her sleep on her 83rd birthday.

Ella was given the nickname "Fundi", which is a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation.

Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money to fight against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South.

Attended college at Shaw University where she graduated valedictorian in 1927.

In 2009, Ella Baker was memorialized on a US postage stamp.

People cannot be free until there is enough work in this land to give everybody a job.

In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed... It means facing a system that does not lend its self to your needs and devising means by which you change that system.

The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence...