Congress of Racial Equality

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"CORE" redirects here. For other uses, see Core.

The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE is a U.S. civil rights organization that played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century. Membership in CORE is stated to be open to "anyone who believes that 'all people are created equal' and is willing to work towards the ultimate goal of true equality throughout the world."

[edit] Foundation

CORE was founded in Chicago in 1942 by James L. Farmer, Jr., George Houser and Bernice Fisher. Bayard Rustin, while not a father of the organization, was "an uncle to CORE", Farmer and Houser later said. CORE evolved out of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. The Congress of Racial Equality sought to apply the principles of nonviolence as a tactic against segregation. The group's inspiration was Krishnalal Shridharani's book War Without Violence (1939, Harcourt Brace), which outlined Gandhi's step-by-step procedures for organizing people and mounting a nonviolent campaign. Shridharani, a popular writer and journalist as well as a vibrant and theatrical speaker, had been a protege of Gandhi and had been jailed in the Salt March. Gandhi had, in turn, been influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Mohandas Gandhi was then still engaged in non-violent resistance against British rule in India. The group believed that nonviolent civil disobedience could be used by African-Americans to challenge racial segregation in the South and eventually other parts of the United States.

[edit] Civil rights campaign

On April 9, 1947, CORE sent a group of eight white and eight black men on what was to be a two-week Journey of Reconciliation through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky in an effort to end segregation in interstate travel. The members of this group were arrested and jailed several times, but they received a great deal of publicity, and this marked the beginning of a long series of similar campaigns.

By the early 1960s, Farmer, who had taken a hiatus from leading the group, returned as its executive secretary and sought to repeat the 1947 journey, coining a new name for it: the Freedom Ride. On May 4, 1961, participants journeyed to the deep South, this time including women as well as men and testing segregated bus terminals as well. The riders were met with severe violence and garnered national attention, sparking a summer of similar rides by other Civil Rights leaders and thousands of ordinary citizens.

[edit] Internal disagreements

CORE leadership had strong disagreements with the Deacons for Defense and Justice over the Deacons' threat to use violent tactics to protect CORE workers from racist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, in Louisiana during the 1960s. By the mid-1960s, however, Farmer was growing disenchanted with the emerging militancy and black nationalist sentiments within CORE, and he resigned in 1966.

At a conference in Oakland, California, in July 1967, the group struck from its constitution the phrase calling CORE a "multi-racial organization". It then adopted new constitution advocating "Black Power" as a goal at a conference in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 16 1968. The St. Louis meeting was the re-convening of a conference in held in July 1968 in Columbus, Ohio, where some delegates had walked out due to the new constitution proposal.

[edit] CORE since 1968

Since 1968, CORE has been led by National Chairman, Roy Innis. Subsequent political developments within the organization led it more and more to the right or center, depending on one's perspective. Hence it supported the presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. In recent times it has been praised by the conservative Project 21 organization.<ref>Project 21</ref>

[edit] Criticism

Critics charge that since taking over the organization in 1968, Roy Innis has moved it sharply to the right. The Village Voice says that in the early 1990s co-founder James L. Farmer, Jr. stated that, in his opinion, CORE was "fraudulent."<ref>The Village Voice</ref> It also faced criticism from the liberal/progressive. This organization refused to acknowledge hundreds of thousands of Black Americans are dying of AIDS; an advocacy and education program for Black Women was cancelledPeople For the American Way.<ref>PFAW</ref>.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

• August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975)

[edit] External links

• Congress of Racial Equality
• "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!" Web site for documentary of Journey of Reconciliation.
• Chris Mooney, Mother Jones, May/June 2005, "Black Gold?" - CORE, ExxonMobil, and "eco-imperialism"