Essentially, she was a radical. She came out of a family that rebelled against the status quo, and she carried on the family tradition. But she was not against; she was for. She was for the participation of people in whatever affected their lives. She was for the best in all of us.

The story of Ella Baker begins in the last century. She came from a long line of strong women: her mother, Georgianna; her grandmother, Betsy; her aunts, Lizzie and Carrie. There were strong men, too: her grandfather, Michael Ross, who forged a community life for them, and Uncle Alpheus, who stood tall amid the people. She carried these legacies with her into the race discord of the twentieth century.

Though she did not want to be a teacher, in fact, she became one - not in the institutional sense but as an organizer and nurturer of future activists. She ever taught Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a thing or two - despite his resistance - by insistently nudging him to reach out to ordinary people. King saw the need to organize them. Baker did her best to try to turn him into an organizer.