Ray stannard baker articles for kids videos

Ray Stannard Baker April 17, — July 12, also known by his pen name David Grayson was an American journalist , historian , biographer , and author.

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Baker was born in Lansing, Michigan. After graduating from the Michigan State Agricultural College now Michigan State University , he attended law school at the University of Michigan in before launching his career as a journalist in with the Chicago News-Record, where he covered the Pullman Strike and Coxey's Army in In , Baker joined the staff of McClure's , a pioneer muckraking magazine, and quickly rose to prominence along with Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell.

He also dabbled in fiction, writing children's stories for the magazine Youth's Companion and a nine-volume series of stories about rural living in America, the first of which was titled Adventures in Contentment under his pseudonym David Grayson, which reached millions of readers worldwide. In , after the Atlanta Race Riot got him involved, Baker published the book Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citizenship in the American Democracy , becoming the first prominent journalist to examine America's racial divide; it was extremely successful.

Sociologist Rupert Vance says it is:. This account was written during the zenith of Washingtonian movement and shows the optimism that it inspired among both liberals and moderates. The book is also notable for its realistic accounts of Negro town life. In , he moved to the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. In , Baker published The Friendly Road , an account of the places he visited and people he met while on a walking tour of the United States.