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Local figure

Quinton Baker

Quinton Baker was a student at North Carolina College in Durham, president of the state NAACP Youth Council and an organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality. In 1963 Floyd McKissick sent him to Chapel Hill to teach nonviolence and demonstration tactics to local activists. Around New Year's Day 1964 he was among the sit-in demonstrators doused with ammonia at the Rock Pile, a segregated grocery on the Durham Road.

Source: The Daily Tar Heel, January 7, 1964

1 work about Quinton Baker is indexed here.

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Life and Orange County connections

Storylines this person is part of, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineChapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–19651960–1965 · 101 events · Nine Lincoln High students began Chapel Hill's sit-ins at Colonial Drug on February 28, 1960. Through 1963 and 1964 Black residents and UNC students picketed, marched and sat in, and held a Holy Week fast at the post office, but the aldermen narrowly rejected a public accommodations ordinance and many businesses stayed segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In April 1965 John Ehle's The Free Men traced the 1963-1964 campaign through three of its leaders, John Dunne, Pat Cusick and Quinton Baker, and the new interracial Chapel Hill-Carrboro Council on Human Relations named a steering committee on housing, education and employment, its leader saying he foresaw no protests like those of 1964. In May James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, speaking in Chapel Hill for the first time since January 1964, told about 300 people in Memorial Hall that the movement would turn toward the economic upgrading of Black communities and political organizing.

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 3 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Floyd McKissick sends organizers to Chapel Hill and defends arrested demonstrators As head of CORE's Durham office, McKissick sent organizer Quinton Baker to Chapel Hill in 1963 to teach nonviolence and demonstration tactics, and he acted as attorney for many demonstrators arrested there. Letters to him in 1964 include one written from the Orange County jail. People: Floyd B. McKissick, John Dunne, Quinton Baker Place: Chapel Hill · Also mentions: Orange County jailSearch the index · UNC Libraries: I Raised My Hand to Volunteer, Documents and Photographs
  2. Sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile are doused with ammonia Around New Year's Day 1964, sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile, Carlton Mize's segregated grocery on the Durham Road, were doused with ammonia and bleach water. Seven were treated for burns, among them NAACP youth leader Quinton Baker; four were arrested, and thirteen more were arrested at a second sit-in there the next day, when five more needed treatment. People: John Dunne, Quinton Baker Place: Rock Pile, Durham Road (1501 East Franklin Street), Chapel Hill · Also named: Carlton MizeThe Daily Tar Heel, January 7, 1964, p. 1 · Also: The News of Orange County (Hillsborough), January 23, 1964, p. 2
  3. Harper and Row publishes John Ehle's The Free Men, an account of the Chapel Hill protests Ehle's nonfiction book traced the 1963–1964 civil rights campaign in Chapel Hill through three of its leaders, John Dunne, Pat Cusick and Quinton Baker, from the first pickets at a cafe to mass arrests and long prison sentences. People: John Ehle, Pat Cusick, John Dunne, Quinton Baker Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · DigitalNC: The Carolina Times, March 27, 1965, page 9 (John Ehle's Book, The Free Men, to Be Published by Harper and Row)

People named in the same events

People named in the same dated entries as Quinton Baker, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Indexed works

Works about or by Quinton Baker. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it. Background reading appears below.

Oral history interview with Quinton E. Baker, February 23, 2002: interview K-0838, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Baker, Quinton E. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Quinton E. Baker, a Black gay man who took part in the Chapel Hill civil rights protests of the 1960s, was interviewed by Chris McGinnis in February 2002. He describes growing up under segregation with little contact with white people, an early awareness of his sexuality, and the way race and sexual identity together shaped his activism as a college student. About two and a half hours; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2008, through Documenting the American South.

Included because: Its title names this person.

NC Cardinal UNC

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Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.

  • The Rock Pile Businesses, mills and venues · Chapel Hill · 1 event here

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  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Quinton Baker Library card Search NC LIVE for this subject and Orange County. You can change the search terms. Sign in through your North Carolina library to access the materials.
  • Ancestry Library Edition In the libraryOrange County Public Library Census, birth, death and marriage records, and more, free on the public computers at OCPL libraries

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