James Leonard Farmer Jr. was born on
January 12th, 1920 in Marshall Texas. He was a damn good student in
school and became the first Black to get a doctorate in his state,
and was even a college freshman at 14 years old. He earned a divinity
degree (didn't know that was a thing) from Howard University,
choosing to follow his fathers path. He began to learn about Mahatma
Gandhi and his teachings regarding non-violence.
Eventually Farmer
ended up living in Chicago and become a TV screenwriter and writing
for a magazine. In 1942 he and some other similar thinking people did
a sit-in at a segregated restaurant. They ended up creating the
Committee of Racial Equality (CORE) which then became the Congress Of
Racial Equality which at the start consisted mostly of Northern
Whites. Farmer then began working on the Freedom Rides which were
trying to stop segregation while traveling on interstates. The first
ride they made in May of 1961 ended with the bus being firebombed
after it reached Alabama because 1960's. Members of the group were
also beaten and attacked and thanks to television the nation was able
to see this. The Interstate Commerce Commission, enforced by Robert
Kennedy, an attorney general, made it so that segregation was no
longer allowed on public transportation in the South. Farmer resigned
after a few years and deaths of his colleagues. He began teaching at
Lincoln University, ran for Congress, and eventually worked for the
Richard Nixon administration but left that.
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