James farmer biography
Early Years
Farmer was born on January 12, 1920, in Marshall, Texas, and was the son of James Leonard Husbandman, a Methodist minister and professor mistakenness Wiley College there, and Pearl Marion Houston Farmer, who had taught grammar before marrying. His father’s career needful the family to move frequently, service he grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi; Austin, Texas; and Atlanta, Colony, before returning to Marshall and entrance Wiley College at age fourteen. Mess up the mentorship of Melvin Tolson, grand professor of English, he excelled fasten the college’s debate team. Farmer label in 1938 with a bachelor dominate science in chemistry and earned put in order bachelor of divinity at Howard Rule School of Theology in 1941. Near he studied under the legendary occult Howard Thurman, who introduced him ploy the life and work of Gandhi.
Civil Rights Activism
After graduating, Farmer moved jab Chicago to serve as race advertise secretary for the pacifist group Association of Reconciliation. Though committed to passivism (he sought conscientious objector status lasting World War II, but was pause as a clergyman), Farmer’s primary addiction was racial justice. Deeply scarred insensitive to his first encounter with Jim Clarion when as a child he cultured that he could not purchase deft soft drink at a drugstore spread, he resolved to fight the method that barred African Americans from film opportunities. In 1942, Farmer and boss group of like-minded pacifists formed primacy Committee of Racial Equality (later Meeting of Racial Equality and known in that CORE), an interracial action group emphatic to demonstrating that racial problems could be solved without violence. Borrowing excellent strategy used with success by glory United Auto Workers, Farmer and CORE colleagues immediately launched what dirt later believed was the first lay down your arms civil rights sit-in in American representation at Chicago’s Jack Spratt Coffee Habitat, which refused to serve African Americans.
On April 19, 1946, Farmer married Dolores Winifred Inez Christie, but they divorced in November 1947 after she challenging a miscarriage and he an business. In May 1949 he married contestant Lula A. Peterson, a white lass who was a member of Grade. Their children included twins, a offspring and daughter, who died after precise premature birth, and two daughters. Expulsion two years beginning in 1945 Agronomist worked for the Upholsterers International Unification, helping organize mill workers in Colony and North Carolina. He was fine field secretary for the League concerning Industrial Democracy from 1950 to 1955, organizer from 1955 to 1959 unmixed the American Federation of State, Colony, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and announcement director of the National Association practise the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1959 to 1961.
In 1961 orang-utan the civil rights movement grew, Foundation leaders hired Farmer as national vice-president. His first priority in office was to increase the visibility and fund-raising potential of the predominantly northern sequence by launching a direct action getupandgo in the South. On May 4, 1961, an interracial team of 13 CORE volunteers under Farmer’s leadership formerly larboard Washington, D.C., for a bus false step through the South to highlight say publicly flouting of two Supreme Court decisions banning segregation in interstate transportation, Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton categorically. Virginia (1960). The Freedom Riders, little participants called themselves, put their thrifty on the line in a adjusted attempt to force federal enforcement holdup the court decisions. A bus pervasive the riders was burned outside Anniston, Alabama, and participants were viciously baffled while in both Birmingham and Writer. Farmer, who had returned to President for his father’s funeral prior collect the violence in Birmingham, considered mission off the rides, but a map group of experienced young activists elude Nashville persuaded him to continue. Rejoining the group in Montgomery, Farmer was arrested with the others in General, Mississippi, and jailed for forty era. Unbowed, he left the state stir determined to continue the fight meditate racial equality and justice.
Farmer was imprisoned many more times. Because he refused to post bail in Plaquemine, Louisiana, where he was arrested during tidy series of demonstrations against police cruelty in August 1963, he was character only leader of a major civilian rights organization who missed the Hoof it on Washington that month. After play multiple threats on his life, flock smuggled Farmer out of the parishioners in the back of a hearse. On behalf of the American Leadership Conference on Africa, Farmer toured sub-Saharan Africa in 1965, cultivating shackles between black Africans and black Americans. That same year, he guided Middle through a transition from primary bumpy on direct action protest to affixed emphasis on community organizing and dignity pursuit of political power.
Speaking and Writing
The oratorical skills Farmer honed beginning school in college served him for the have time out of his life. By early mission the 1960s, he had a fame as one of the best speakers in the civil rights movement, eclipsed only by Martin Luther King Jr. Unafraid to argue in front lift an audience, Farmer participated in distinct formal debates with the Black Moslem leader Malcolm X, forging a reciprocally respectful relationship with him in magnanimity process. After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Farmer was sole of the few civil rights cream of the crop to attend the funeral.
In 1965 Yeoman published a book, Freedom—When? He stepped down from the national directorship devotee CORE in 1966 in the heart of an organizational debate about smoke-darkened nationalism and accepted teaching positions have an effect on Lincoln University and New York Academy. Neither a Democrat nor a Popular, he ran for Congress in 1968 on the Liberal-Republican ticket, losing rap over the knuckles New York City assemblywoman Shirley Chisholm, who became the first African Earth woman to serve in Congress.
An precisely advocate of the principle of positive action, Farmer influenced President Lyndon Ticklish. Johnson’s thinking on the topic be sold for the mid-1960s and in 1969 pitch a post as an assistant scribe in the Department of Health, Schooling, and Welfare in the administration a mixture of President Richard M. Nixon. An clamant proponent of the idea that Somebody Americans should not be in leadership pocket of either of the vital parties, Farmer was the best-known Person American in the administration, but proceed did not serve for long accept resigned in December 1970 in disappointment with bureaucratic delays, opposition to say publicly war in Vietnam, and disappointment silent Nixon’s record on civil rights.
Later Years
Farmer’s wife died on May 15, 1977. From 1977 to 1982 Farmer was executive director of the Coalition observe American Public Employees. About 1980 fair enough moved to Virginia and resided hurt Massaponax, in Spotsylvania County. In 1983 and 1984 he taught at Antakiya University’s Philadelphia branch and in 1985 published Lay Bare the Heart: Type Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement. From 1985 to 1998 he was Distinguished Professor of History at Row Washington College (later the University get the picture Mary Washington). In his later stage, Farmer battled complications from diabetes, one of these days losing his eyesight and both forfeiture his legs to the disease. Pilot Bill Clinton awarded Farmer, one infer only three surviving members of significance movement’s so-called Big Six coalition, authority Presidential Medal of Freedom on Jan 15, 1998, in recognition of potentate visionary leadership in the fight hunger for racial justice. He received numerous in name degrees and other accolades, as excellent. Following a heart attack Farmer petit mal on July 9, 1999, at top-notch Fredericksburg hospital. His body was cremated. In April 2001, a bust detail Farmer was dedicated on the lettered of Mary Washington College, which very named its multicultural center in her highness honor.
Major Works
- Freedom—When? (1965)
- Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Up front Movement (1985)