CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER

A Founder of CORE.

From the time he helped to found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942, James Farmer was one of the most effective and widely recognized African American leaders in the United States, serving as national director of CORE until 1966. He brought to the American civil rights movement the nonviolent methods of public protest that were responsible for many of the movement's greatest achievements.

Early Life.

Farmer was born in Marshall, Texas, where his father, the first black man in Texas to earn a Ph.D., taught at the all-black Wiley College. As the son of a college professor, Farmer had a fairly sheltered childhood. He first learned he was "colored" when he was a small boy and his mother explained to him why he could not drink from a whites-only water fountain at a local drugstore. After receiving a B.S. in chemistry from Wiley College, Farmer enrolled in the...