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By: Adrian
Dove
February 2003
The
Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, is the third oldest of the
major historical Civil Rights organizations which in began in
the 1940’s 50’and 60’’s.
It was CORE, more than the other two older groups NAACP
and Urban League ;which led the massive struggle.
It was CORE, founded by James Farmer in Chicago in
1942, which created the concept of Non-Violent Resistance to
laws that were immoral but which had been adhered to since the
end of Reconstruction and the Plessy-vs-Ferguson decision by
which the Supreme Court had enshrined the fallacious concept
of ‘Separate but Equal as the law of the land.
It
was CORE which in the late1940’s and early 50’s which
launched the integrated teams of bus riders throughout the
south called the “Freedom Riders” to test the
Interstate Commerce Compact which mandated equal access to IC
related accommodations.
The CORE Freedom Riders launched a new era in the midst
of lynchings and
public support of segregation in the US Congress houses.
It was the brave CORE Freedom Fighters who then got off
the busses throughout the rural and urban south and began the
CORE “”Sit-Ins” at local restaurants, hotels and
train station diners and even dared to integrated the
public toilets at Airports and Train Stations, which had until
then been reserved for use whites only.
The
CORE Freedom Riders and Sit-Ins of the late
40’s and early 50’s were met with massive resistance and
extreme violence administered by local poor white women and
white men who were generally supported in their violence by
their local electeds and many of their Representatives to both
housed of the U.S. Congress.
For the simple act of trying to eat at a JJ Newbury a
Kresge or Woolworth’s Lunch Counter or even at a lowly
Stucky’s Chicken Hut, the CORE freedom Riders were almost
always beaten, while hot coffee was poured on them by jeering
mobs while local police just stood and watched.
CORE
was pretty much alone in this phase of launching of what was
to become the Civil rights Movement.
It was CORE that gave birth to the massive civil rights
movement from pain and suffering endured in a host of small
towns all across the south and in some parts of the North and
West as well. At
the start of their Non-Violent Strategy of pushing the issue
James Farmer and CORE were criticized harshly by Roy Wilkins,
head of the NAACP, because he felt the legal approach of the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund was far less disruptive and therefore
the proper way. CORE
differed from NAACP in other ways as well.
Local Chapters and State Organizations of CORE were
encouraged to innovate and do whatever it would take to get
the job done within the law and in a non-violent way.
National
CORE was led by James Farmer from 1942 to 1966, at which time
there was elected Floyd McKissock, in the midst of tumultuous
times with cities ablaze from “Civil Unrest” and
opposition to the US involvement openly in Vietnam and
secretly sn Cambodia. With
many of the early focused upon civil rights in public
accommodations being mendd and voting rights, fair employment
and fair housing laws being put on the books in state
after state the focus of CORE was diverted from civil rights
and equal opportunity in the areas of jobs and housing and
police misconduct, the focus of national CORE was shifted to
economic development and housing.
Floyd McKissock, actually moved the National
Headquarters of CORE from its traditional homes in Chicago and
New York to a whole new Utopian village to be created in rural
Virginia. The state Organizations and their Chapters began to
fall apart during an extended period of neglect between 1966
and 1969, while the cities burned and increasingly Police
Powers were being increased primarily at the expense of the
Black Community and other poor segments of the society.
Whereas after the 1954 Earl Warren Supreme Court
Decision (Brown vs the Topeka Kansas Board of Education) there
was the 1955, Rosa Parks bus seat refusal which brought forth
the great and eloquent leader Dr. Martin Luther King, who
shortly after his assumption of a leadership role in the
Montgomery Movement to protect Ms. Parks, he was visited and
mentored by Bayard Rusting of New York City who introduced the
CORE tactics of Non-Violence and economic boycott into the
equation which grew then into a complete boycott of the
city’s busses and the downtown merchants rather than just
the release of Rosa Parks as had originally been the demand.
In
1969, CORE National, there arose out of the New York State
organization and New York City Chapters, a new younger leader
Roy Innes, who with his team began to return CORE National to
some of its basic tenants that still needed attention, such as
following up on case work and initiating mobilizations where
needed. CORE also
became fiscally self sustaining for the first time in may
years. CORE National has been headed by Roy Innes from 1969
through the present. In
addition to administration of Welfare to Workfare training and
other youth and elderly programs, CORE has for the past 19
years sponsored the Annual Martin Luther King Harmony Awards
in Manhattan and in the Summer another Awards Event with a
summer street festival occupying all of Times Square. The
current year’s Keynote addresses included First Lady Laura
Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
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