Ella Baker Quotes
Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.
Baker, Ella. "Bigger Than a Hamburger." The Southern Patriot, vol. 18, no. 5, June 1960.
This was the first time that the term “human rights” was used. FDR, a personal friend of Wells, then used the term in his Four Freedoms speech and thus was the first politician to use the term. Later Mrs. Roosevelt was instrumental in using the phrase in the United nations “Declaration of Human Rights” and enshrined the term in the English and world language.
Ella Josephine Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Rosa Parks, and Bob Moses, whom she first mentored as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
