Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s protest strategies for non-violence and civil disobedience, a group of black and white college students in Chicago in 1942 founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), helping to launch one of the America’s most important civil rights movements.
Taking a leading role in sit-ins, picket lines, the Montgomery bus boycott, Freedom Rides, and the 1963 March on Washington, the group worked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and D. Other civil rights leaders throughout the 1950s and mid-1960s until, in 1966, under new leadership, he concentrated from civil disobedience to becoming a black separatist organization and Black Power.
CORE founding principles
Founded by activists associated with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an interfaith peace organization, the group was greatly influenced by Gandhi’s teachings and, in the early 1940s, worked to integrate Chicago restaurants and businesses into using sit-ins and other non-violent actions. , according to the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute for Research and Education at Stanford University.
CORE’s 1947 Reconciliation Journey, an integrated, multi-state bus ride through the Upper South, “faced minimal violence, although several of the horsemen were arrested and two sentenced to work in a gang of the chain in North Carolina, ”the institute writes.
A pillar of CORE’s principles was a strict devotion to interracial belonging, writes historian Brian Purnell in his book Fight Jim Crow in Kings County. “CORE hoped to create an interracial, nonviolent army that would end racial segregation in America with campaigns using what Gandhi called satyagraha, which translates to “force of soul” or “force of truth”. CORE’s founders believed that public displays of interracial solidarity and the disciplined use of nonviolence by local chapters would transform America into a truly colorblind democratic society. “
During its early years, according to Purnell, local CORE chapters were formed in 19 cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York, although many did not last long. .
“Their victories were often of limited significance,” he writes. “CORE chapters might be successful in desegregating a downtown ice rink or opening up housing for a handful of blacks, but the process CORE chapters had to go through was long and arduous.
At the end of 1954, many chapters of CORE were dissolved, but, according to the Chicago Public Library, the organization found a new dedication after the Brown vs. School Board Supreme Court decision issued the same year. “CORE has decided to channel the majority of its energies on the South,” notes the library, supporting the sit-ins and sending field secretaries to advise activists on non-violent protest methods.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Spurred on by Rosa Parks, who in 1955 was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, CORE supported a boycott of the city’s buses, leaving them with low ridership for a year. In 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that the state’s bus segregation laws were unconstitutional.
The boycott became a model of civil disobedience in the civil rights movement, and, notes the King Institute, CORE promoted King’s work during the bus boycott, adding that in October 1957 the leader agreed to serve on the CORE advisory committee.
The King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) continued to work with CORE on several projects, including supporting integrated education, voter education, and the Chicago campaign.
READ MORE: 10 Things You Maybe Didn’t Know About Rosa Parks
Freedom towers
CORE National Director James Farmer organized Freedom Rides in the spring of 1961, with the mission to test two Supreme Court decisions, according to the New York Times: Boynton v. Virginia, which disaggregated bathrooms, waiting rooms and meal counters, and Morgan vs. Virginia, which desegregated inter-state buses and trains.
“The Freedom Rides took place as the civil rights movement gathered momentum, and during a time when African Americans were regularly harassed and segregated in the Jim Crow South,” reports The Times.
Thirteen black and white women and men took part in the original Freedom Ride, heading south to Washington, DC, including future civil rights leader and US Representative John Lewis.
According to the Global Nonviolent Action Database, the volunteers received intensive training. “As an interracial group, their intention was to sit wherever they wanted on buses and trains and demand unrestricted access to terminal restaurants and waiting rooms,” he says.
The movement and the participants grew, as did the arrests, mob violence and police brutality.
King was in favor of Freedom Rides, but did not personally participate due to the danger involved.
“In Anniston, Alabama, a bus was set on fire and its fleeing passengers were forced into an angry white crowd,” writes the King Institute. “As violence against Freedom Rides increased, CORE considered shutting down the project. A Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was formed by representatives from the Nonviolent Student Coordinating Committee, CORE and SCLC to support the rides.
The attacks were widely reported by the media, but, according to the Times, they pushed Farmer to end the campaign: “The Freedom Riders finished their trip to New Orleans by plane.”
READ MORE: Mapping the Freedom Riders’ journey against segregation
But national efforts and attention have helped bring about change. On September 22, 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to end the segregation of inter-state bus terminals. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, ending segregation in public places across the country, was passed three years later.
After the Freedom Rides, CORE focused on voter registration and co-sponsored the March on Washington in 1963, where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Mississippi murders and power struggle
As part of Mississippi’s 1964 Summer of Freedom voter registration campaign, CORE members James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (Goodman and Schwemer were white, Chaney was black) were arrested for speeding on June 21, 1964. At the events which inspired the 1988 Film Burning Mississippi, it was reported that the men had previously visited a church that had been burnt down by the Ku Klux Klan.
Reserved for the county jail and eventually fined, released and escorted by police to the outskirts of town, they were not seen alive again. Their bodies were found over a month later. All had been shot.
In a 1967 trial, 19 men were charged with federal charges, seven of whom were found guilty of civil rights violations, and none served more than six years.
The case was bought out years later, and after a murder trial in 2005, former KKK leader Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
READ MORE: How freedom rider Diane Nash risked her life to desegregate the South
The murders, according to the King Institute, have left many activists “disenchanted” with the methods of non-violence employed by groups like CORE.
“In 1966, a power struggle within CORE forced Farmer to resign as national director, leaving the more militant Floyd McKissick in his place,” he says. “After King worked with McKissick in the summer of 1966 on Meredith March Against Fear, CORE adopted a Black Power-based platform and limited White involvement in the organization.
After King’s assassination in 1968, McKisick told the New York Times On April 4, 1968, King “was the last prince of nonviolence. … Nonviolence is a dead philosophy, and it was not blacks who killed it. It was whites who killed non-violence and white racists in addition “.
Roy Innis, elected national director of CORE in 1968, called the group “once and for all a black nationalist organization”, according to the New York Times, and promoted segregated education and conservative Republican policies and candidates. A polarizing figure, her leadership caused Farmer and other CORE members to quit the group.
s
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), The King Institute
Fighting Jim Crow in Kings County by Brian Purnell
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, nps.gov
Global Database on Nonviolent Action
These murdered civil rights activists receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Time
Who Were the Freedom Riders ?, The New York Times
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Edgar Ray Killen, convicted of ‘Mississippi Burning’ murders in 1964, dies at 92, NBC News
