Ray Stannard Baker , also known by his pen name David Grayson, was an American journalist and author born in Lansing, Michigan. After graduating from the State Agricultural College , 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.
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