[3] At a 1966 conference in Washington, DC, Baird argued convincingly that the word Negro "is used solely to describe the slaved and the enslavable", and that instead the description Afro-American should be used.
[1] Baird was born in Arch Hall, St. Thomas Parish, in the then British colony of Barbados, West Indies, and in 1947 at the age of 24 travelled to the U.S., where he studied at Columbia University, earning a bachelor's degree in romance philology and linguistics.
[4] At a conference in 1966 in Washington, DC, he advocated convincingly for the use of the description "Afro-American" to replace the word "Negro", which he said was "used solely to describe the slaved and the enslavable".
Writing in the journal Social Casework in 1970, he argued for the "semantic liberation" of African Americans, since they — rather than the "conquerors" who had brought their ancestors to the Americas in chains — must dictate the terms that should be used to describe themselves and their community.
[3] He has been described by Molefi Asante, chair of African-American studies at Temple University, as "one of the pillars of Pan-Africanism, with a perspective that included the Caribbean, the United States and Africa".