A founding member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), James
Farmer was one of the major leaders of the nonviolent African American
civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Academic world
James Farmer was born January 12, 1920. His father was James Leonard
Farmer Sr., the son of a slave, who was an ordained minister and who
had earned a doctorate from Boston University. He is believed to have
been the first African American man from Texas to receive a doctorate.
A campus chaplain and professor of religion and philosophy, he worked
at several small black Methodist colleges in the South.
Growing up in the academic world, Farmer encountered less racism
than other African American children in the South during that era. But
as he entered his teens, segregation (the separation of blacks and whites
in public places) began to disturb him deeply. Farmer was an excellent student and began
attending Wiley College in Texas at the age of
fourteen. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree
in chemistry in 1938. He went on to study religion at Howard University, hoping to use the
ministry as a way to participate in the civil rights
movement. At the time, Howard boasted some
of the best minds of the day. It was there that
Farmer learned about the ideas of Indian spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948),
who led the civil disobedience and nonviolent
protest movement for India’s independence from
Britain. As his studies progressed, Farmer began
to have doubts about entering the ministry. He
wrote his graduate thesis on religion and racism,
and he became disillusioned with the Methodist
Church, which was segregated by race.
Pioneer in civil rights
In 1942, Farmer became a founding member of
CORE in Chicago, Illinois. He organized the country’s first sit-in with
about twenty-five others, black and white, at a coffee shop that refused
service to blacks. (See Sit-in Movement.) CORE eventually gained national recognition, and Farmer was elected chairperson, then an unpaid
position. He also worked as a labor organizer.
After the successful Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama in 1956,
in which the African American residents of the town refused to ride
Montgomery’s segregated buses for a year, forcing the bus system to desegregate, Farmer immersed himself in the civil rights struggle. He joined
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). The NAACP worked mainly through the court system and
was never a confrontational group. Farmer, interested in developing the
direct action, nonviolent techniques that Gandhi had used, took a second look at CORE.
Organizes the Freedom Rides
In 1961, Farmer took a paid position as national director of CORE and
soon initiated the freedom rides, one of the most important campaigns of the civil rights movement. Although discrimination was illegal on interstate bus lines, many Southern states still had segregated waiting
rooms and made blacks ride at the back of the bus. Farmer and a dozen
others set out in 1961 to challenge these practices. In direct violation of
Jim Crow laws of the South, which required the separation of blacks
and whites in public places, black freedom riders planned to sit in the
front of the buses while white freedom riders sat in the back. They would
“desegregate” every station along the way by having the black riders use
the “white” waiting rooms while the white riders used the “colored” facilities.
Opposition to the freedom riders in the South was strong. There
were a few ugly incidents at first, but it was in Alabama that violence
erupted. Riders were severely beaten by mobs there and one of the buses
was firebombed. Farmer missed the violence because he had to leave the
group when his father died. He rejoined for the final leg of the freedom
rides and was arrested and imprisoned for forty days. In the end, U.S. attorney general Robert Kennedy (1925–1968) ordered desegregation of
buses, and the effort brought great support to the civil rights movement.
Changing course
By the mid-1960s, Farmer realized that disagreement within the ranks of
the protestors themselves threatened the civil rights movement. Many
members of the movement were growing dissatisfied with nonviolent
tactics, claiming they were not working fast enough. Also, a growing
number of factions were competing for attention and support. Farmer
resigned from CORE in 1965.
In his later career, Farmer held several academic teaching positions.
In 1968, he ran for Congress in New York, but he was defeated by an
African American, New York assemblywoman Shirley Chisholm
(1924–2005). In 1969, Farmer briefly served as assistant secretary in the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, where he implemented
affirmative action programs—programs designed to correct past discrimination with active measures to ensure equal opportunity. He wrote
books on labor and race relations as well as an autobiography, Lay Bare
the Heart (1985). President Bill Clinton (1946–; served 1993–2001)
awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Farmer died in
Fredericksburg, Virginia, at the age of 79.