Divine, Father (George Baker)
c.1876-1965 · Contribution: 1919-1965
Religious leader; founder of the Peace Mission movement
Founded the International Peace Mission movement, an early and aggressive force for racial desegregation decades before the mainstream civil rights movement
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- c. 1876, likely Maryland
- Active since
- 1919
- Category
- Religious & Spiritual Leadership
- Best known for
- Founding the International Peace Mission movement
Impact on the world
Widely regarded by outside observers as a cult leader for claiming to be God, Divine nonetheless built one of the earliest sustained experiments in racial integration in America, providing food, shelter, and jobs during the Depression.
An alternative history
What Would the World Look Like Without It?
One contribution. Many possible consequences. No single-person origin story.
Imagine this selected contribution absent, not the person or the entire field. The areas below are reflection prompts related to this discipline, not verified chains of direct dependency.
Sources
- Book or scholarly workFind
Encyclopædia Britannica
Exact source links open the cited record. Source lookups help locate legacy references whose original records did not include a direct URL.
2 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
Grace, Charles Manuel 'Daddy' (Marcelino Manuel da Graca)
1881-1960
Founded the United House of Prayer for All People, building it into a financially self-sustaining Black religious denomination that preached to integrated congregations across the segregated South decades before the civil rights movement
Garvey, Marcus Mosiah
1887-1940
Developed a theology of a Black God and co-founded the African Orthodox Church; fused Christian religious practice with Black nationalist organizing in the largest Black mass movement in American history
Muhammad, Elijah
1897-1975
Led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975, building it from a small Detroit congregation into a nationwide organization with tens of thousands of members, a network of independently owned farms, businesses, schools, and a major newspaper, while mentoring Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali
Truth, Sojourner (Isabella Baumfree)
c.1797-1883
Took on a divinely-inspired new name and identity in 1843 to become an itinerant preacher, building a decades-long ministry that fused evangelism with abolitionism and women's rights advocacy