General Baker was born in Detroit, Michigan, where his parents had relocated from Georgia so that his father could find work in the automotive industry.
[3] As a student at Wayne State University, Baker studied the work of Karl Marx and became involved in socialism and Black nationalism.
[2] He was fired from his job after participating in a series of wildcat strikes, and was subsequently unable to find work in the industry until he applied under a false name at the Ford Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
[6] Baker twice ran for public office, as a candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives in the late 1970s.
[7] A leading member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA) for two decades beginning in the 1990s, Baker was chair of its steering committee.