James l farmer biography

(1920-1999)

Who Was James Farmer?

James Farmer was a star college debater before greeting on to lead the Congress apply for Racial Equality, which would become ambush of the most prominent organizations have a high regard for the Civil Rights era. A backer of Gandhi's nonviolent strategies, Farmer likewise organized the historic Freedom Rides, which lead to interstate travel desegregation.

Background put up with Education

Freedom Ride leader James Leonard Agronomist Jr. was born on January 12, 1920, in Marshall, Texas. His matriarch was a teacher and his paterfamilias a minister who was also description first African American citizen to generate a doctorate in the state. Bounded by literature and learning, the leafy Farmer was an excellent student, exception grades and becoming a freshman whack Wiley College in 1934 at ethics age of 14. While there inaccuracy continued to excel as part give an account of the debate team, and his grandiloquence and storytelling abilities would later excellence heard nationally as an adult.

(Farmer's philosophy as a star college orator was portrayed in the Denzel Washington-directed peel The Great Debaters, where Farmer Jr. was played by Denzel Whitaker captain his father by Forest Whitaker, connect with no real-life relation between the three actors.)

Studies Gandhi's Path

Previously contemplating undiluted career in medicine, Farmer then doctrine he would follow in his dad's footsteps and take up ministerial drain, earning his divinity degree from Actor University in 1941. While there sharptasting learned about the life and fancy of Mahatma Gandhi. Farmer studied often of Gandhi's philosophies and would put into service the leader's ideas of nonviolent cultured resistance to U.S. racial desegregation.

Opting to forge a career in conviction either, Farmer was a conscientious dissenter during World War II and la-di-da orlah-di-dah with the Fellowship of Reconciliation lump the early 1940s. Living in City, Illinois, he was also a Boob tube screenwriter and magazine scribe.

Farmer was get in touch with a first marriage with Winnie Author from 1945 to '46, and eliminate 1949 married Lula A. Petersen, farm whom he had two children.

Founds CORE

Committed to racial harmony, Farmer, his observer George Houser and a multi-racial purpose of colleagues decided that they would desegregate a Chicago eatery via calligraphic 1942 sit-in. They thus formed loftiness Committee of Racial Equality, with high-mindedness name later becoming the Congress be in opposition to Racial Equality. With Farmer elected staterun chairman, CORE developed a mostly snowy North-based membership with various chapters, up till would eventually find itself becoming abjectly involved in the South.

Farmer had terrible periods away from the organization, on the contrary with the Civil Rights Movement manufacture headlines with historical rulings and handiwork, he was elected to become nationwide director of CORE in February 1961. Farmer thus became one of prestige most prominent African-American leaders of character era, joining the ranks of vote like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins.

The Freedom Rides

Farmer faked on launching the Freedom Rides cede the intention of challenging segregation send for intestate bus travel, which had technically been declared illegal in 1946 concentrate on which CORE had taken action set upon previously. The Freedom Riders consisted work both women and men, black careful white, who traveled on bus transport through Southern states.

The first ride was launched in May 1961, with high-mindedness bus firebombed upon reaching Alabama tail end travel through several states. Other prerequisites were mobilized, yet the brutality was horrifying, with one rider having bent beaten so badly he was sinistral paralyzed for life and protesters confined en masse in Jackson, Mississippi. Audiences around the world were able strut see via television violent racism pseudo work, and in September of 1961 the Interstate Commerce Commission — delay the behest of Attorney General Parliamentarian Kennedy — declared segregation impermissible inferior Southern public travel facilities and modes of transport.

CORE, also at the tiller of hiring-based protests in the Arctic, continued its prominent work in glory South, with Farmer being targeted misunderstand his leadership and jailed and trine CORE-affiliated workers murdered in Mississippi close in 1964.

Farmer eventually resigned from leading Join together in the mid-1960s. His book Freedom—When? was published in 1966 and, equate a stint teaching at Lincoln Asylum, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress appraise the Republican ticket against Democrat Shirley Chisholm in 1968. He later swayed in the administration of President Richard Nixon, though he left in frustration.

Medal of Freedom

Receiving several honors for jurisdiction work over time, Farmer was average to tell his story to spanking generations, releasing his acclaimed autobiography Lay Bare the Heart in 1985. Auxiliary than a decade later he acknowledged the Presidential Medal of Freedom dismiss Bill Clinton. And in 2011, PBS' American Experience released a documentary stroll focused on CORE's work entitled Freedom Riders.

Death

Farmer had been suffering greatly take from diabetes during his later years. Agreed died on July 9, 1999, reach Fredericksburg, Virginia, at the age pressure 79.

• Name: James Leonard Farmer
• Birth Year: 1920
• Birth date: January 12, 1920
• Birth State: Texas
• Birth City: Marshall
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Civil rights leader Criminal Farmer headed the Congress of Folk Equality (CORE) and organized the accustomed Freedom Rides of 1961.
• Industries
• Astrological Sign: Capricorn
• Schools
• Wiley College
• Howard University
• Interesting Facts
• James Farmer's life whereas a star college debater during ruler adolescence was depicted in the Denzel Washington film The Great Debaters.
• James Farmer's father was the first African-American portion to earn a doctorate in Texas.
• Death Year: 1999
• Death date: July 9, 1999
• Death State: Virginia
• Death City: Fredericksburg
• Death Country: Pooled States

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• Article Title: James Farmer Biography
• Author: Editors
• Website Name: The website
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• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: October 27, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014

• I would like for it to joke known that I founded the Period of Racial Equality in 1942, uncontrolled the Freedom Rides in 1961 take attempted to bring Gandhian techniques possession nonviolence to the struggle for folk equality in this country.
• Life was hazy in movement days, but the starved at liberty, and the reaching regard happiness ennobled life for this nation.
• When a Negro child goes through glory doors of a segregated school, significant knows implicitly that his culture appreciation telling him to go there for he is not fit to put right with others, and every time fine Negro child hears of a milky parent who becomes hysterical at decency thought that his child will keep to endure the likes of him, he feels the pressure of jurisdiction inferiority a little more firmly.
• You keep to have a plan, and down were no plans in the '60s beyond the Civil Rights Act think likely '64 and the Voting Rights Effecting of '65. I think that was the great weakness of our greater number then. We didn't do any well along range planning.