--- title: Cornel West Civil Rights Movement Video: Ella Baker description: The noted thinker tells TIME that Martin Luther King, Jr., couldn't have done what he did without this one woman canonical: https://time.com/3457466/cornel-west-ella-baker/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-03T14:55:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:33:38.775Z article:section: History og:title: The Civil Rights hero Cornel West says you need to know about og:description: This woman was a key figure in the movement, but you may never have heard of her og:url: https://time.com/3457466/cornel-west-ella-baker/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Civil Rights hero Cornel West says you need to know about twitter:description: This woman was a key figure in the movement, but you may never have heard of her twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The Civil Rights Leader Cornel West Thinks You Should Know About > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Oct 3, 2014 2:55 PM UTC  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Oct 3, 2014 2:55 PM UTC [For this week’s issue of TIME](http://time.com/3455639/10-questions-with-cornel-west/), Cornel West — acclaimed thinker and activist — sat down to talk with Belinda Luscombe about his new book, _Black Prophetic Fire_. The book, which he wrote with Christa Buschendorf, looks at the work of six leaders from African-American history. But, as is pointed out in the video above, those six leaders aren’t all equally well known: the book moves from the most famous Civil Rights names, W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King, Jr., to a name that may be unfamiliar to those not versed in the subject. That name is Ella Baker — and, in West’s words, she was “one of the greatest.” So what did she do? Ella Baker worked with the NAACP starting in 1940, and was motivated by the Montgomery bus boycott to dedicate herself further to the cause of civil rights. In the mid-1950s, she worked alongside King during the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). When lunch-counter [sit-ins](http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1957689,00.html) began to become a powerful form of nonviolent protest, another civil rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), came together — with Baker leaving SCLC to throw her lot in with the younger group. SNCC became one of the most important organizations in the civil rights movement, and Baker stayed active in the cause for the rest of her life. She never became as famous as her contemporaries — but, if you ask Cornel West, that doesn’t mean she’s any less important. “I think that people lead in a lot of different ways,” he told TIME. “You can lead quietly by example, and that’s what she did.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3457466/cornel-west-ella-baker/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3457466/cornel-west-ella-baker/"},"headline":"The Civil Rights Leader Cornel West Thinks You Should Know About","datePublished":"2014-10-03T14:55:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:33:38.775Z","description":"The noted thinker tells TIME that Martin Luther King, Jr., couldn't have done what he did without this one woman","url":"https://time.com/3457466/cornel-west-ella-baker/","keywords":["Civil Rights","video"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/civil-rights/","name":"Civil Rights"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3457466/cornel-west-ella-baker/","name":"The Civil Rights Leader Cornel West Thinks You Should Know About"}}]}] ```