Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1903, Ella Baker was brought up from the age of seven in North Carolina. In the 1860s, her grandparents had managed to buy part of the estate where they had previously worked as slaves and they became prosperous farmers. Her grandmother’s recollections about life under slavery had a profound influence on the young Ella.
Determined to build a better life for all African Americans, she secured a place at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Graduating at the top of her class in 1927, Ella Baker moved to New York and soon became a member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League, a movement dedicated to increasing the economic power of African Americans by working together. She later became its national director. She also worked in the 1930s for the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal ‘alphabet agencies’, teaching African history and labour history.
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