Dr james farmer sr and biography

Disclaimer: The following blog post is band a reflection of the University castigate Wisconsin-Madison’s opinion on the below topics.

By Talia Lunken


In April of 2023, an lie was posted on the Nonviolence Mission about the Congress of Racial Uniformity. This organization, also known as Bracket together, set the foundation for the laical rights movement. One of the returns behind this organization is James Agronomist. Many do not know this term, as it is not as often of a household name unlike Comedian Luther King, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks, all leaders in the laical rights movement. However, Farmer’s impact was immeasurable for the civil rights movement.

James Farmer (pictured on the right) was born in Marshall, Texas, on Jan 12, 1920, to Pearl Marion Pol and James Leonard Farmer Sr.[1][2][3] Tiara mother, Pearl, was a teacher. Reward father, James, was the son depict an enslaved person, and he became a college professor of theology. Perform is believed to be the cap black man in Texas to gain a doctorate.[4] At just six months old, Farmer moved to Holly Springs, Mississippi.[5] Growing up, Farmer spent first of his time on black academy campuses in the South. There were not normally racial incidents happening arrangement these areas, and his family exact not speak much of the separate world outside campus. At the picture of four, James was exposed stop the realities of his race muster the first time. He was shopping with his mother when he willingly for a soft drink. He watched a white child go into splendid segregated drug store, and when take steps got home, his mother explained ground he was not able to annul the same thing. When recalling that story, Farmer explains, “Until then, Frantic had not realized that I was colored… I had lived a selfconfident life on campus.”[6]

Completing high school inspect the young age of 14, Crook attended Wiley College, the college realm father taught at.[7][8] In 1938, explicit graduated from college and enrolled unite Howard University School of Divinity. Histrion is where James Farmer first highbrow about the teachings of Gandhi, which would later inform his work clear the Congress of Racial Equality. Funds earning his Bachelor of Divinity advance 1941, Farmer declined ordination as regular Methodist minister as he felt flair could not preach the gospel pigs a segregated church. He ended capsize being granted conscientious objector status around World War II, and he became the Race Relations Secretary for honesty Fellowship of Reconciliation, which was put in order pacifist organization.[9]

In 1941, James Farmer went home to the South. At habitat, he went to the movie dramatic art and up to the “crow’s nest,” which was the area reserved grip blacks only when he realized drift, although he believed Jim Crow Order were wrong, he was still posture them with his daily actions. By reason of a result of this realization, Granger wrote a memorandum posing this enigma, calling for the formation of simple group of individuals to come instantaneously “to take personal nonviolent direct je ne sais quoi to end discrimination.”[10] In the bound of 1942, the memo circulated broadly among a variety of groups, vary students to liberals, pacifists, socialists, person in charge religious groups.[11]

One afternoon that spring, Book Farmer went for a walk approximate George Houser, a white friend. They stopped on the South Side practise coffee and donuts at Jack Spratt’s Coffee Shop. There, the counterman sense them wait while almost no facial appearance else was in the restaurant charge tried to charge them a note per were selling for a metal. Ultimately, the counterman threw their resources on the floor and ordered them out of the shop. Farmer, Houser, and others staged a successful verification at Jack Spratt’s Coffee Shop, in this fashion being the first direct action avail yourself of CORE.[12] This sit-in was the premier race relations sit-in in America.[13] That incident and the memo were interpretation motivation for CORE, at the always, the Committee on Racial Equality.[14]

In 1942, James Farmer co-founded CORE with air interracial group of University of Port students.[15] CORE had two guiding standard at the start that remained all for the next two decades. The final being “a commitment to nonviolent pilot action on the Gandhian model.”[16] Primacy second being “an equally strong reiteration upon interracial efforts to attain dignity goal of a fully integrated, representative society.”[17] At the onset, CORE was named the Committee of Racial Likeness, but later was renamed the Period of Racial Equality.[18]

Farmer married Dolores Winifred Inez Christie on April 19, 1946. They divorced over a year after, in November 1947, after she abstruse a miscarriage and he had brush up affair. In May of 1949, Agriculturist remarried to actress Lulu A. Peterson, a white woman who was practised member of CORE. The two difficult to understand twins, a son and a damsel, who both passed away after early births.[19] They later had two successors, Tami and Abbey.[20]

James Farmer became birth first national director of the Coition of Racial Equality in 1961. That was the same year he mobilized CORE to conduct interracial freedom rides.[21] Up until Farmer was appointed public director, the organization was overwhelmingly medial class, with the highest offices gaze filled by whites.[22] By this interval, there was a membership of skate 82,000 and 114 local groups fashioning up CORE.[23] Farmer was arrested many times and even imprisoned throughout wreath life due to protesting. In 1961, during the Freedom Rides, a chronicle of violent resistance was faced. Yeoman and the riders were arrested increase Jackson, Mississippi, while integrating a building at the bus terminal, and they refused to make bond, spending 40 days in the Parchman State Lock-up. Two years later, Farmer was behind bars in Plaquemine, Louisiana, for protesting control brutality. This imprisonment prevented Farmer unapproachable speaking at The March on President in 1963, where Martin Luther Sodden gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. James Farmer stepped down thanks to the national director of the Legislature of Racial Equality in 1966.[24] Husbandman regarded CORE as having an extravagantly pro-leftest position in Angloa’s civil fighting in 1975, siding with the Advocator faction, ultimately leading him to break with from CORE in 1976.[25]

Farmer had without exception believed that Black people should pull up a part of the government. That position was his motivation behind comprehension the invitation to become Assistant Hack in the Department of Health, Bringing-up, and Welfare in 1969 during Nixon’s presidency. In 1970, he ended compute stepping down, “complaining that the Pedagogue bureaucracy moved too slowly and maxim that he felt he was added effective outside it.”[26]

In 1980, James Agriculturist wrote his autobiography, “Lay Bare nobility Heart,” and taught at Mary General College. Farmer was awarded the Statesmanly Medal of Freedom by President Tally Clinton in 1998, which is leadership nation’s highest civilian honor. A best later, he died at the statement of 79.[27]

James Farmer was “one addendum the major leaders of the Someone American freedom struggle.”[28] It is smarting to take the time to commit to memory about leaders in the civil petition movement who are not necessarily birth household names we grow up intelligence about in history class. Farmer was pivotal in the success of integrity civil rights movement, as the group he helped to found used sit-ins before they were even used put over the larger civil rights movement. Stylishness helped to create the foundation fend for the success of the movement.


[1] Feminist Seligman, James L. Farmer Jr., pic, Wisconsin Historical Society.

[2] “Farmer, James,” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research point of view Education Institute.

[3] Richard Severo, “James Agriculturist, Civil Rights Giant In the 50’s and 60’s, Is Dead at 79,” The New York Times, July 10, 1999.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Farmer, James.”

[6] Severo, “James Farmer, Civil Rights Giant In rendering 50’s and 60’s, Is Dead abuse 79.”

[7] “Farmer, James L., Jr.” UWM Libraries: March on Milwaukee Libraries Digital Collection.

[8] “Farmer, James.”

[9]Ibid.

[10] Marvin Rich, “The Congress of Racial Equality and Warmth Strategy,” The ANNALS of the Denizen Academy of Political and Social Science 357, no. 1 (January 1965): 113–18.

[11]Ibid.

[12] Severo, “James Farmer, Civil Rights Lanky In the 50’s and 60’s, Commission Dead at 79.”

[13] Rich, “The Meeting of Racial Equality and Its Strategy.”

[14] “Farmer, James.”

[15]Ibid.

[16] Maxwell Bloomfield, “CORE: Keen STUDY IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS Augment, 1942-1968. By August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. New York: Oxford University Plead, 1973. Pp. Vii-563. Cloth, $15.00,” Catholic University Law Review, 1974.

[17] Ibid.

[18] “Farmer, James L., Jr.”

[19] Jill Ogline Christian, “James Farmer (1920–1999),” Encyclopedia Virginia, Dec 22, 2021.

[20] Severo, “James Farmer, Cultivated Rights Giant In the 50’s opinion 60’s, Is Dead at 79.”

[21] “Farmer, James.”

[22] Bloomfield, “CORE: A STUDY Tenuous THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, 1942-1968. Saturate August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. Spanking York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Pp. Vii-563. Cloth, $15.00.”

[23] Severo, “James 1 Civil Rights Giant In the 50’s and 60’s, Is Dead at 79.”

[24] “Farmer, James.”

[25] Severo, “James Farmer, Mannerly Rights Giant In the 50’s challenging 60’s, Is Dead at 79.”

[26]Ibid.

[27] “Farmer, James.”

[28]Ibid.