James l farmer sr biography template
•
James Farmer Sr., prominent early 20th Century educator, initially gained attention as the first African American to hold a Ph.D. in the state of Texas. Farmer was born on June 12, 1886 in Kingstree, South Carolina to Carolina and Lorena Farmer, who were former slaves. As a child, Farmer was a proficient scholar, receiving all A’s up until he reached the eighth grade when he attended McLeod Institute in South Carolina. Despite such promise his education ended because there was no high school available in his community for African Americans. Farmer’s record, however, came to the attention of local community leaders who raised more than four hundred dollars to send him North to continue his education. With no guarantee of admission, Farmer nonetheless set his sights on Boston University. He traveled there by foot in 1909.
While working various jobs in the Boston area including as a valet and a carriage boy, he eventually gained admission to Boston University and rece
•
James Farmer conceptualized and developed a nonviolent direct-action philosophy that could be applied in the United States. He drew inspiration from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) and the Indian Independence Movement. As a Pacificist and a Norman Thomas socialist, Farmer would reimagine nonviolent direct-action in the United States to address Jim Crow. Thirteen years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Farmer founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. Nonviolent- direct action became CORE’s guiding philosophy and praxis. After eighty years since CORE’s founding, it is appropriate to revisit Farmer’s autobiographyLay Bare the Heart and by extension his experiences in segregated Black communities to assess the shaping of his intellekt and commitment to racial justice which made him a Black activist- intellectual defined as “having a commitment to knowledge in the service of community, society and humanity.” The following quotes are taken from Farmer’s auto
•
James Farmer
American civil rights activist (1920–1999)
For other people named James Farmer, see James Farmer (disambiguation).
James Leonard Farmer Jr. (January 12, 1920 – July 9, 1999) was an American civil rights activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement "who pushed for nonviolent protest to dismantle segregation, and served alongside Martin Luther King Jr."[1] He was the initiator and organizer of the first Freedom Ride in 1961, which eventually led to the desegregation of interstate transportation in the United States.[1][2]
In 1942, Farmer co-founded the Committee of Racial Equality in Chicago along with George Houser, James R. Robinson, Samuel E. Riley, Bernice Fisher, Homer Jack, and Joe Guinn. It was later called the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and was dedicated to ending racial segregation in the United States through nonviolence. Farmer served as the national chairman from 1942 to 1944.
By the 1960s, Farmer was known