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Ray Stannard Baker (April 17, 1870 – July 12, 1946), also known by
his pen name David
Grayson, was an American
journalist and author born
in Lansing,
Michigan
.
After
graduating from Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State
University
), he attended law school at the University of
Michigan
in 1891 before launching his career as a journalist
in 1892 with the Chicago News-Record, where he covered the
Pullman Strike and Coxey's Army in 1894.
In 1898, 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 the pseudonym David
Grayson.
In 1906, Baker, Steffens and Tarbell left
McClure's and
created
The American
Magazine. In 1908, he wrote the book
Following the
Color Line, becoming the first prominent journalist to examine
America's racial divide. It was extremely successful. He would
continue that work with numerous articles in the following
decade.
In 1912, Baker supported the presidential candidacy of
Woodrow Wilson, which led to a close
relationship between the two men, and in 1918 Wilson sent Baker to
Europe to study the
war situation.
During peace negotiations, Baker served as Wilson's press secretary
at
Versailles. He eventually published 15
volumes about Wilson and internationalism, including an 8-volume
biography, the last two volumes of which won the
Pulitzer Prize for
Biography in 1940.
Baker wrote two autobiographies,
Native American (1941)
and
American Chronicle (1945).
Baker died
of a heart attack in Amherst,
Massachusetts
, and is buried there in Wildwood
Cemetery
. A
dormitory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst bears
Grayson's name. Oddly enough a nearby dormitory "Baker" is named
after somebody else.
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