James L. Farmer\u00a0Jr. (1920-1999)<\/h2>\n
Raised by a professor who taught divinity at Howard University, James Farmer Jr. was a pacifist who sought to achieve racial justice through nonviolent activism.<\/p>\n
Often a target of racial violence, Farmer helped to shape the Civil Rights Movement when he launched The Freedom Rides to challenge the efforts to block the desegregation of interstate busing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We were told that the racists, the segregationists, would go to any extent to hold the line on segregation in interstate travel. So when we began the ride I think all of us were prepared for as much violence as could be thrown at us. We were prepared for the possibility of death,” Farmer said in a 1985 interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Freedom Riders Charles Person, right, and James Peck on the bus in 1961, with James Farmer, the head of CORE, in the background. (Photo: Johnson Publishing Company)<\/span><\/p>\n The national director and co-founder of the first Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1942, Farmer set the foundation for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in the mid-1960s.\u00a0<\/p>\n He spent 41 days in Mississippi jails. One of the most memorable moments of that time, he said, was\u00a0when those jailed alongside him in steel and concrete cells with straw-filled mattresses sang freedom songs together, despite being threatened by guards.<\/p>\n He would go on to serve as assistant secretary of health, education and welfare under President\u00a0Nixon. In 1998, Farmer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n A rumor, then a gunshot: <\/strong>How \u2018Black Wall Street\u2019 was decimated in the Tulsa Race Massacre<\/span><\/p>\n “\u201cWhen we left Atlanta for Birmingham on May 14, 1961 \u2026we knew that we were in for a very rough reception upon arrival.\u201d”<\/p>\n James Peck was born into a wealthy family in New York City. He dropped out of Harvard University to become a full-time activist and was the only person to participate in both the Freedom Rides and Journey of Reconciliation.<\/p>\n \u201cBy encouraging and supporting actions such as that in Montgomery, we who adhere to the principles of nonviolence hope to hasten complete abolition of segregation within our social system,\u201d Peck wrote in CORE\u2019s introduction to Martin Luther King\u2019s 1957 article, \u201cOur Struggle: The Journey of Montgomery.\u201d<\/p>\n Freedom Rider James Peck leaving the airport in Birmingham, Alabama, to board a flight for New Orleans. (Photo: Alabama Department of Archives and History. Donated by Alabama Media Group. Photo by Norman Dean, Birmingham News)<\/span><\/p>\n One of the three women to participate in the early days of the Freedom Rides, Genevieve Hughes quit her job as a stockbroker to become the field secretary of CORE and civil rights activist.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I figured Southern women should be represented to the South and the nation would realize all Southern people don’t think alike,” she said of her reason to join CORE.<\/p>\n Members of the Congress of Racial Equality gather in Washington with a map of a route they plan to take to test segregation in bus terminal restaurants and rest rooms in the South on May 4, 1961. From left are Edward Blankenheim, Tucson, Arizona; James Farmer, New York City; Genevieve Hughes, Chevy Chase, Maryland; the Rev. B. Elton Cox, High Point, North Carolina, and Henry Thomas, St. Augustine, Florida. (Photo: Byron Rollins, AP)<\/span><\/p>\n She, along with John Lewis and Al Bigelow sustained injuries when several white men attacked them at a bus terminal in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on May 10, 1961.<\/p>\nJames Peck (1914-1993)<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nGenevieve Hughes (1932-2012)<\/h2>\n
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