Lucille Sarah Baker

Lucille Sarah Baker was born on October 17, 1912, in Redwood Falls, Minnesota to Charles Clyde Baker and Josephine D. Baker. Baker was also part Senecan Indian. According to the 1920 census, the family moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where Charles worked as a firefighter. In the following 1930 census, Lucille reportedly began work as a part-time servant.¹ She attended Fort Dodge Senior High School and was a member of Sigma Alpha Phi and graduated in 1931 as the only black student in her class.² In 1932 she moved to Des Moines, Iowa to attend Drake University and worked in a law office. In that same year, she helped charter the Beta Gamma Chapter of Alpha Khi Alpha in Des Moines, Iowa.³ The following year, she left school to work for the superintendent of Des Moines in the Des Moines public forum office. At the Des Moines public forum office, she pursued an interest in adult education. She also worked as a secretary to Des Moines City Assessor and for the Iowa Emergency Relief Administration. She returned to pursue her degree and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1937. Following graduation, she began her teaching career at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

In 1938, Baker won a $1,200 fellowship to attend Yale Graduate School. National news outlets marked her out as the first African American to attend Yale Graduate School’s general studies.⁴ While at Yale, she joined Professor Charles Templeman Loram’s race relations seminar that studied contemporary race relations across the country.⁵ After completing her fellowship, she began teaching at Fort Valley State College from 1939 to 1941. She then attended Smith College, graduating with a masters degree in 1942.⁶

She briefly taught at Wilberforce University before moving to Atlanta, Georgia and joined Spelman College’s faculty as a professor in the Education Department from 1943 to 1947.⁷ By the 1950s, she lived in Chicago where she was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Club of Chicago and taught at the Douglas School. Baker died on August 28th, 1964, in Green Bay, Wisconsin at the age of 51.⁸