Potter Baker. He grew up in Lansing, Michigan, and
maintained close links to his home state. He gradu-
ated in 1889 from Michigan Agricultural College in
East Lansing and in 1892 began law school studies
at the University of Michigan. When he left the
university before completing his degree, he relo-
cated to Chicago, where he hoped to realize his
dreams of writing a successful novel. Baker’s turn to
journalism occurred in Chicago, where he began
working as a reporter at the Chicago News-Record.
Baker joined the staff of McClure’s,an influen-
tial journal that Ida Tarbell, one of his fellow
staffers, characterized as “an exacting little mis-
tress” (Semonche, 123). There, according to biog-
rapher John Semonche, he gained a reputation for
being “a perceptive, fair, trustworthy and open-
minded journalist” and became “convinced that he
was making a contribution to the long-neglected
education of the American people” (Semonche,
124). Baker focused on labor issues primarily, even
when prompted by his editors Samuel S. McClure
and John S. Phillips to diversify his writing inter-
ests. He also was interested in issues related to “the
Negro and lawlessness” (Semonche, 124). During
the late 1890s, he documented the Pullman strike
and became a staunch advocate of the strikers. A
committed muckraker, he contributed essays in
1904, to the ground-breaking McClure’s series on
race.
During the Harlem Renaissance period, Baker
published several volumes on Woodrow Wilson,
whose politics he wholeheartedly endorsed. These
included What Wilson Did at Paris (1919),
Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement(1922), and
when he became Wilson’s designated biographer,
the multivolume sets entitled The Public Papers of
Woodrow Wilson (1925–27) and the Pulitzer
Prize–winning collection, Woodrow Wilson: Life
and Letters (1927–39).
Baker, who married Jessie Beal in 1896, relo-
cated with his wife and four children from East
Lansing to Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1910. Fol-
lowing his death as a result of heart disease, he was
buried in the local Wildwood Cemetery in
Amherst.
Bibliography
Baker, Ray. Native American: The Book of My Youth.New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941.
Bannister, Robert. Ray Stannard Baker: The Mind and
Thought of a Progressive.New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1966.
Ray Stannard Baker Papers, Library of Congress; Jones
Library in Amherst, Massachusetts; and Princeton
University Library.
Semonche, John. Ray Stannard Baker: A Quest for
Democracy in Modern America, 1870–1918.Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969Baldwin, William(fl. 1920s)
One of the influential literary figures who lent his
support to the Harlem Renaissance celebrations of
emerging writers. Baldwin was one of the figures
OPPORTUNITYeditor CHARLESS. JOHNSONinvited
to the legendary 1924 dinner at the Civic Club
that was organized to mark the publication of
JESSIEFAUSET’s first novel but instead, much to
Fauset’s dismay, turned into a celebration of sev-
eral leading men of the day such as ALAINLOCKE.Ballad of the Brown Girl, The: An Old
Ballad RetoldCountee Cullen(1927)
A stirring ballad by COUNTEECULLENthat in
1927 was reprinted in an elaborate and decorative
monograph with illustrations. Cullen first pub-
lished the poem while an undergraduate at New
York University. In 1924 it earned second place in
the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Contest
sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. Poet
LANGSTONHUGHESwould compete in and win
the Witter Bynner Contest in 1926. The New York
Times,which recognized enthusiastically Cullen’s
achievement in a full-length column about the 20-
year old writer, noted that he was “one of 700 un-
dergraduates, representing sixty-three colleges and
universities” to have their work judged by Carl
Sandburg, Alice Corbin, and WITTER BYNNER.
Cullen, who was interviewed for the piece, noted
that he was “interested in poetry for poetry’s sake,
and not for propaganda purposes.” “In spite of my-
self,” he added, “however, I find that I am actu-
ated by a strong sense of race consciousness. This
grows upon me, I find, as I grow older: and al-
though I struggle against it, it colors my writing, I
fear, in spite of everything I do.” Cullen dedicated
the 1927 volume, published by HARPER &22 Baldwin, William