This Day in History: A throwback to CORE's protests that led the '60s movement for racial justice
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded by an interracial group of students at the University of Chicago campus. In the early years of the American civil rights movement, CORE emerged as one of the leading activist organizations. It spearheaded the use of non-violent action during the struggle. In 1955, CORE and its parent organization the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), and international peace and justice organizations, joined forces to support Martin Luther King in the Montgomery bus boycott. Regarded as America's first large-scale protest against racial segregation, the Montgomery bus boycott was a civil rights protest where black Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. The demonstrations lasted a whole year and following this, King continued to work with CORE through the later 50s and into the 60's, even serving on its Advisory Committee.
The group first gained national recognition in the 1960s when it used Gandhi's non-violence principles in organizing sit-in m movements to integrate restaurants and businesses that refused to host black patrons. The early activists in CORE comprised James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, Homer Jack, and George Houser who had also been associated with FOR.
In the early 1960s, when the civil rights movement began gaining momentum, CORE collaborated with other civil rights groups to launch several initiatives including the Freedom Summer voter registration project, the Freedom Rides which aimed at desegregation in public places and the momentous 1963 Washington march. While it initially adopted a pacifist, non-violent approach in the fight against racial segregation, in the late 1960s the group's dedication was shifted towards the political ideology of black nationalism and separatism. James Farmer was appointed as CORE's first black national director in February 1961.
In 1961, CORE orchestrated the first Freedom Ride, a multi-state integrated bus ride through the Deep South, with the aim of desegregating interstate transport facilities. Despite being brutally attacked in Alabama to the point that it had to be discontinued, more than a thousand participants, both black and white were a part of the Freedom Rides, that summer. Later that year, CORE prioritized voter registration as its new goal in the fight for civil rights. They centered mostly on Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. But this time, several civil rights activists and workers were beginning to feel that black political power was more likely to help them achieve racial equality, rather than just integration. So the organization's directions shifted entirely but kept racial understanding as its nucleus. However, the emphasis now was on black autonomy. The voter registration projects were with pessimistic views on integration following a slew of violent activity. CORE then expanded its work in the North, which also brought to light the rampant racial discrimination problem that had been persisting in the US.
CORE joined the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) which co-ordinated between local and national activities of civil rights organizations in Mississippi, in 1962. This resulted in the 1964 Freedom Summer and the Mississipi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). This questioned the state's all-white delegation at the annual Democratic National Convention. That year, three CORE activists, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner were killed by members of the white-supremacist extremist group, Ku Klux Klan, while they were working as volunteers during Freedom Summer. The murders coupled with limited success of the MFDP led to many activists including some members of CORE to be discontent with non-violence. In 1966, there was a power struggle within CORE, and Farmer, a pacifist advocate of racial integration was replaced by Floy McKissick, who was more militant and had committed himself to black separatism. King was fully immersed in work with CORE, but after his assassination, McKissick declared that non-violences was a "dead philosophy". Thereafter, CORE's primary focus was on efforts of black nationalism and political and economic justice for the black community.