27. Ella Baker, The Woman Behind the Civil Rights Curtain
Few women were more deeply involved in the American civil rights movement than Ella Baker. While she never sought the limelight, she was instrumental to the inner workings of numerous organizations and public figures. Her first work was helped to create a Young Negroes Cooperative League in New York. She then worked for the NAACP while also helping start the In Friendship organization to fight Jim Crow laws. She helped to organize Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. What an incredible legacy.
