DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. James Leonard Farmer, Junior. Born January 12th, 1920.
Gone July 9th, 1999. And right here — right on this ground — a young boy named James spent his childhood years between 1925 and 1930, while his father, Doctor James L. Farmer, Senior, taught at Samuel Huston College, the institution we know today as Huston-Tillotson University.
Nobody watching that boy play could've known what was coming. But something was building. Fast-forward to 1942.
James Farmer, Junior is a young man now, and he does something that will echo across decades — he founds the Congress of Racial Equality. CORE, they called it. And CORE wasn't just an organization with a name on a letterhead.
It trained civil rights leaders in nonviolent civil disobedience tactics, drawn from the principles of Gandhi — discipline against hatred, courage against cruelty, bodies on the line and not a fist raised in anger. Under Farmer's leadership, CORE organized the Freedom Riders in 1961. Men and women who climbed onto buses and rode straight into the heart of the Deep South to desegregate interstate transportation.
That took a particular kind of nerve. The kind you can't manufacture. Farmer went on to serve as an Assistant Secretary in the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1969 to 1970. And in 1998 — one year before he died — he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The highest civilian honor this country can give.
That little boy who lived here grew up to change the nation. The marker doesn't have to say another word.
What the marker says
James L. Farmer, Jr.(Jan. 12, 1920-Jul. 9, 1999)Civil rights leader James Leonard Farmer, Jr., son of Pearl (Houston) and Dr. James L. Farmer, Sr., lived here as a child from 1925-30. James, Sr. taught at Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University). In 1942, James, Jr. founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which trained civil rights leaders in Ghandi-inspired nonviolent civil disobedience tactics to protest racial discrimination. Under Farmer's leadership, CORE organized the 1961 "Freedom Riders" to desegregate interstate transportation in the Deep South. Farmer was an Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Deparment of Health, Education, and Welfare (1969-1970). He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. (2008)