Getting to the Core

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the development of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) founded in 1942 by James Farmer to help aid the plight of the discriminated African-Americans. It examines how he was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's ideas of non-violent protest and sought to model the fight for African-American civil rights on Gandhi's peaceful campaigns in India. It evaluates how the divergences in CORE's policies and its differences with other African-American groups did not help the smooth continuation of the Black Freedom Movement and how until the mid to late 1960s the Congress of Racial Equality worked closely with other organizations. Its intellectual stance and firm commitment to non-violence gave African-Americans the moral upper hand in their frequent confrontations with often violent " and even at times murderous " Whites. It analyzes how CORE and its brother organizations were able to articulate a coherent program regarding what needed to be done in the cause of Black Freedom but by giving into the violence of ignorant segregationists and letting the assassinations of Dr. King and others change the course of the movement, CORE and other civil rights groups produced the great divide between black and white that still exists today.

From the Paper:

"After this tragic beginning, the Freedom Rides continued. However, each successive journey through the Deep South underscored the deep divisions still seething beneath the surface of American society. In an attempt to avoid further problems over the civil rights question, President John F. Kennedy had taken only minimal steps toward ensuring the rights of African Americans. While he paid lip service to the concept " appointing Black judges and the like " he left the enforcement of civil rights legislation up to the local authorities. This "Federal Plan" was even more confusing and unworkable than it sounded. Not only was the decision on how, or even whether, to enforce Supreme Court decisions, and federal laws left up to the states and localities, but even on this level there was no clear agreement over policy. Officials in the same city, or even in the same department took opposite sides in the conflict."

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