James Farmer Jr. and the Freedom Riders: Background Information

James Farmer Jr. was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, advocating nonviolent direct action as a tactic for drawing attention to the injustices faced by African Americans in the United States. He was born in 1920 to parents who were well-educated and had professional careers. As a child he observed the racial discrimination faced by his father and mother and determined at a young age to fight for an end to segregation. While still a teenager he began his preparation. He was enrolled at Wiley College at the age of 14 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. A few years later he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Howard University. In his early 20s he founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an organization committed to end segregation.

While studying at Howard University, Farmer became interested in pacifism and studied the methods used by Gandhi in India’s struggle for independence. He believed that such tactics might be adopted in a fight to end segregation in the United States. One of the main principles of Farmer’s tactics was nonviolent direct action, through which a group engages in an act in order to expose an existing problem. Farmer and the newly established CORE experimented with nonviolent direct action by staging a sit-in at a segregated diner in Chicago. White patrons who filled the diner refused to be served until a black patron who accompanied them had been given his meal. Restaurant owners called the police. When the police arrived, they found that the peaceful protestors had not violated any law. Eventually the diner gave in to their demands and changed their policies. Spurred on by this success, Farmer and CORE sought other opportunities to fight segregation.

In 1961 Farmer and CORE decided to expose the problems of segregated buses, which were common throughout the South. Their objective was to demonstrate the conflict between state laws and Supreme Court decisions that declared unconstitutional laws that segregated interstate buses. Farmer’s plan was simple in its design but dangerous in its execution. A racially mixed group of patrons would travel from Washington, DC to New Orleans by bus, sitting together not only on the buses but in bus stations and lunchrooms along the way. Participants were trained in non-violent tactics to prepare for the hostility they might face. They saw little opposition in the upper South, but as they entered Alabama things changed. Riders were abused, with a national audience listening and watching. Other Civil Rights leaders organized similar rides, with similar results. Eventually the police in some cities prevented the violence by arresting the riders. Farmer went to jail. The Freedom Riders were successful in drawing national attention and sympathy among many to the problems of segregated buses.

Farmer went on to become one of the most recognized leaders of the Civil Rights movement. He helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, served for a short period of time on Nixon’s cabinet as Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and remained active in the ongoing struggle for equality until his death in 1999.