Congress of Racial Equality

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 in Chicago. Among the students who created the organization were James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, Anna Murray, and George Houser. They had come to the conclusion that pacifism was the best way to approach the racial issues confronting the black community. The students were influenced by Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi, and they practiced nonviolence and civil disobedience because these strategies had been used so successfully by people in India to end British colonial rule of their country.

In 1947, CORE announced plans to send a team of eight white men and eight black men into the deep South to test the ruling that interstate transportation had to be segregated. It was called the Journey of Reconciliation and was to last for 2 weeks through North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky. The NAACP (National Association for the [Page 193]Advancement of Colored People) did not like the direct action proposed by CORE and thought that such a movement of disobedience would bring about wholesale slaughter in the South. The Journey of Reconciliation left Chicago on April 9, 1947. The team included George Houser, Bayard Rustin, James Peck, Igal Roodenko, Nathan Wright, Conrad Lynn, Wallace Nelson, Andrew Johnson, Eugene Stanley, Dennis Banks, William Worthy, James Farmer, Louis Adams, Joseph Felmet, Worth Randle, and Homer Jack.

The Journey of Reconciliation team ran into trouble in several states. At one point, two African Americans were found guilty of violating South Carolina's Jim Crow bus statute and were sentenced to 30 days on a chain gang. However, the judge said he found the attitude of the white men even more objectionable, so although he sentenced the black men, Bayard Rustin and Andrew Johnson, to 30 days, he sentenced the white men, Jewish students Igal Roodenko and Joseph Felmet, to 90 days on a chain gang as punishment for coming to the South with blacks. This event galvanized the members of the Congress of Racial Equality. In February of 1948, the Council Against Intolerance in America gave George Houser and Bayard Rustin the Thomas Jefferson Award for the Advancement of Democracy for seeking an end to segregation.

The leader of the group who would make the most important contribution to ending segregation was James Farmer, who became National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1953 and helped organize student sit-ins during 1961. The sit-ins against segregation were held in public parks, churches, libraries, museums swimming pools, and theaters. Within 6 months, these sit-ins had ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in 26 Southern cities. Later, the Congress of Racial Equality organized Freedom Rides through the South. In Birmingham, Alabama, one of the buses was firebombed and its passengers were beaten by a white mob.

By 1961, CORE had 53 chapters throughout the United States. Two years later, the organization helped organize the famous March on Washington. On August, 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people marched peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. In 1963, Floyd McKissick replaced James Farmer as the national director. The following year, CORE, the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), and the NAACP organized their Freedom Summer campaign. The idea was to put an end to the fear that existed in the political arena and to support the right of blacks to vote. CORE was considered one of the major civil rights organizations in the country.

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