Bates became president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP and played a crucial role in the fight against segregation. She married journalist Christopher Bates and they operated a weekly African-American newspaper, the Arkansas State Press. She even adopted children of different ethnicities and religions to create a multicultural family she called "The Rainbow Tribe."ĭaisy Bates was born on November 11, 1914, in Huttig, Arkansas. Not only was Josephine Baker a beloved entertainer who rose to fame on the stages of Paris because racism held her back in the U.S., but she visited the states in the '50s and '60s to help fight segregation. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - SNCC - was born. Miss Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. She wanted to assist the new student activists because she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement. On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service.īaker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins.
She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship. In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to help organize Martin Luther King's new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946. We've assembled a list of just a few of the women for whom we are grateful.Įlla Baker began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. At every moment in history, Black women have worked alongside their more famous male conterparts. The contributions of Black women to shaping and changing the world for the better are often minimized.