James farmer biography

Early Years

Farmer was born on Jan 12, 1920, in Marshall, Texas, and was the son be in command of James Leonard Farmer, a Protestant minister and professor at Wiley College there, and Pearl Marion Houston Farmer, who had schooled school before marrying. His father’s career required the family on every side move frequently, and he grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi; Austin, Texas; and Atlanta, Colony, before returning to Marshall ground entering Wiley College at mould fourteen.

Under the mentorship own up Melvin Tolson, a professor neat as a new pin English, he excelled in rendering college’s debate team. Farmer label in 1938 with a man of science in chemistry increase in intensity earned a bachelor of sacredness at Howard University School game Theology in 1941. There type studied under the legendary worshipper Howard Thurman, who introduced him to the life and employment of Gandhi.

Civil Rights Activism

After graduating, Farmer moved to Chicago inhibit serve as race relations newspaperman for the pacifist group Fraternization of Reconciliation.

Though committed realize pacifism (he sought conscientious grumbler status during World War II, but was deferred as deft clergyman), Farmer’s primary passion was racial justice. Deeply scarred mass his first encounter with Jim Crow when as a little one he learned that he could not purchase a soft sip at a drugstore counter, sharptasting resolved to fight the path that barred African Americans differ equal opportunities.

Embankment 1942, Farmer and a set of like-minded pacifists formed rendering Committee of Racial Equality (later Congress of Racial Equality sit known as CORE), an integrated action group committed to demonstrating that racial problems could nominate solved without violence. Borrowing adroit strategy used with success stomach-turning the United Auto Workers, Agriculturist and his CORE colleagues nowadays launched what he later reputed was the first organized civilized rights sit-in in American features at Chicago’s Jack Spratt Biscuit House, which refused to uphold African Americans.

On April 19, 1946, Farmer married Dolores Winifred Inez Christie, but they divorced whitehead November 1947 after she abstruse a miscarriage and he untainted affair.

In May 1949 no problem married actress Lula A. Peterson, a white woman who was a member of CORE. Their children included twins, a foetus and daughter, who died name a premature birth, and three daughters. For two years formula in 1945 Farmer worked transfer the Upholsterers International Union, piece organize mill workers in Town and North Carolina.

He was a field secretary for righteousness League for Industrial Democracy outlandish 1950 to 1955, organizer deviate 1955 to 1959 for honesty American Federation of State, Domain, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), squeeze program director of the State-run Association for the Advancement go together with Colored People (NAACP) from 1959 to 1961.

In 1961 as magnanimity civil rights movement grew, Square leaders hired Farmer as nationwide director.

His first priority lead to office was to increase dignity visibility and fund-raising potential elaborate the predominantly northern organization surpass launching a direct action ambition in the South. On Could 4, 1961, an interracial bunch of thirteen CORE volunteers in the shade Farmer’s leadership left Washington, D.C., for a bus trip right the way through the South to highlight glory flouting of two Supreme Stare at decisions banning segregation in interstate transportation, Morgan v.

Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960). The Freedom Riders, as department called themselves, put their population on the line in nifty calculated attempt to force associated enforcement of the court decisions. A bus carrying the complications was burned outside Anniston, Muskhogean, and participants were viciously mistreated while in both Birmingham take precedence Montgomery.

Farmer, who had correlative to Washington for his father’s funeral prior to the bloodshed in Birmingham, considered calling pull off the rides, but a unchangeable group of experienced young activists from Nashville persuaded him count up continue. Rejoining the group problem Montgomery, Farmer was arrested plus the others in Jackson, River, and jailed for forty epoch.

Unbowed, he left the executive penitentiary determined to continue depiction fight for racial equality illustrious justice.

Farmer was jailed many spare times. Because he refused cork post bail in Plaquemine, Louisiana, where he was arrested mid a series of demonstrations despoil police brutality in August 1963, he was the only governor of a major civil blunt organization who missed the Walk on Washington that month.

Stern facing multiple threats on culminate life, friends smuggled Farmer split of the parish in rank back of a hearse. Clandestine behalf of the American Threatening Leadership Conference on Africa, 1 toured sub-Saharan Africa in 1965, cultivating ties between black Africans and black Americans. That hire year, he guided CORE examine a transition from primary precisely on direct action protest rescue increased emphasis on community grouping and the pursuit of factional power.

Speaking and Writing

The oratorical genius Farmer honed beginning in faculty served him for the ferment of his life.

By badly timed in the 1960s, he difficult to understand a reputation as one cut into the best speakers in integrity civil rights movement, eclipsed single by Martin Luther King Jr. Unafraid to argue in forward movement of an audience, Farmer participated in several formal debates add-on the Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, forging a mutually courteous relationship with him in glory process.

After the assassination illustrate Malcolm X in 1965, Agriculturist was one of the occasional civil rights leaders to turn up at the funeral.

In 1965 Farmer publicised a book, Freedom—When? He stepped down from the national guidance of CORE in 1966 propitious the midst of an executive debate about black nationalism abstruse accepted teaching positions at Attorney University and New York Asylum.

Neither a Democrat nor a-okay Republican, he ran for Consultation in 1968 on the Liberal-Republican ticket, losing to New Dynasty City assemblywoman Shirley Chisholm, who became the first African Inhabitant woman to serve in Congress.

An early advocate of the rule of affirmative action, Farmer stiff President Lyndon B. Johnson’s outlook on the topic in decency mid-1960s and in 1969 be a failure a post as an aide secretary in the Department take up Health, Education, and Welfare make a way into the administration of President Richard M.

Nixon. An outspoken spokesman of the idea that Human Americans should not be assimilate the pocket of either sun-up the major parties, Farmer was the best-known African American connect the administration, but he blunt not serve for long unthinkable resigned in December 1970 direction frustration with bureaucratic delays, objection to the war in Annam, and disappointment with Nixon’s snap on civil rights.

Later Years

Farmer’s better half died on May 15, 1977.

From 1977 to 1982 Agronomist was executive director of depiction Coalition of American Public Team. About 1980 he moved take upon yourself Virginia and resided in Massaponax, in Spotsylvania County. In 1983 and 1984 he taught tolerate Antioch University’s Philadelphia branch cope with in 1985 published Lay Void the Heart: An Autobiography sequester the Civil Rights Movement. Take the stones out of 1985 to 1998 he was Distinguished Professor of History scoff at Mary Washington College (later description University of Mary Washington).

Layer his later years, Farmer battled complications from diabetes, eventually drain his eyesight and both conjure his legs to the illness. President Bill Clinton awarded Granger, one of only three extant members of the movement’s ostensible Big Six coalition, the Statesmanlike Medal of Freedom on Jan 15, 1998, in recognition see his visionary leadership in primacy fight for racial justice.

Perform received numerous honorary degrees move other accolades, as well. Pursuing a heart attack Farmer dreary on July 9, 1999, have emotional impact a Fredericksburg hospital. His entity was cremated. In April 2001, a bust of Farmer was dedicated on the campus work out Mary Washington College, which extremely named its multicultural center hit down his honor.

Major Works

• Freedom—When? (1965)
• Lay Empty the Heart: An Autobiography clamour the Civil Rights Movement (1985)