The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-Americancivil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background."[2] To combat discriminatory policies regarding interstate travel, CORE participated in Freedom Rides as college students boarded Greyhound Buses headed for the Deep South. As the influence of the organization grew, so did the number of chapters, eventually expanding all over the country. Despite CORE remaining an active part of the fight for change, some people have noted the lack of organization and functional leadership has led to a decline of participation in social justice.
In accordance with CORE's constitution and bylaws, in the early and mid-1960s, chapters were organized on a model similar to that of a democratic trade union, with monthly membership meetings, elected and usually unpaid officers, and numerous committees of volunteers. In the South, CORE's nonviolent direct action campaigns opposed "Jim Crow" segregation and job discrimination, and fought for voting rights. Outside the South, CORE focused on discrimination in employment and housing, and also in de facto school segregation. "Jim Crow" laws are laws that enforce racial segregation and discrimination in the United States.
Some of CORE's main leadership had strong disagreements with the Deacons for Defense and Justice over the Deacons' public threat to racist Southerners that they would use armed self-defense to protect CORE workers from racist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, in Louisiana during the 1960s. Others strongly supported the organization. By the mid-1960s, Farmer tried to incorporate elements of the emerging black nationalist sentiments within CORE—sentiments that, among other things, would quickly lead to an embrace of Black Power. Farmer failed to reconcile these tensions, and he resigned in 1966, but he backed his replacement, Floyd McKissick.[10][11]
Congress of Racial Equality march in Washington DC, on September 22, 1963, in memory of the children killed in the Birmingham bombings. The banner, which says "No more Birminghams", shows a picture of the aftermath of the bombing.
By 1961 CORE had 53 chapters throughout the United States. By 1963, most of the major urban centers of the Northeast, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and West Coast had one or more CORE chapters, including a growing number of chapters on college campuses. In the South, CORE had active chapters and projects in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, and Kentucky.[12]
Irene Morgan
In 1944, Irene Morgan, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to move from the front "white" seating section to the back "colored" seating section of a Greyhound interstate bus while traveling from Virginia to Maryland. After the Virginia state court upheld her conviction and arrest, Morgan's case was brought before the Supreme Court with Morgan v. Virginia on June 3, 1946.
Morgan v. Virgina
Initially, Morgan's legal team only included Spottswood Robinson III, but they were later joined by NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and William H. Hastie. They used the Interstate Commerce Clause in the Constitution, which declared that states could not impose rules that interfered with passengers crossing state lines, as the prevailing tactic to argue her case. However, Virginia state courts did not find this argument convincing.[13]
Contrarily, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Irene and asserted that the Virginia Legislature could not impose segregation among interstate bus travelers. This landmark ruling would go on to inspire CORE members to seek out non-violent ways to push back against segregation outside of the court system.[14][13]
On April 10, 1947, CORE sent a group of eight white men, including James Peck, their publicity officer, and eight black men, on what was to be a two-week Journey of Reconciliation through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to test state’s compliance with the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding segregation within interstate travel.[15][16]
The group was composed of men only, to get around certain laws of the time that restricted the mixing of males and females.[17] These participants then underwent rigorous training aimed at equipping them with the necessary skills to react non-violently, even in the face of violent behaviors. They would act out intense role-playing exercises to simulate real-life scenarios they may encounter, in an attempt to improve their resolve in the face of violence. Throughout the two-week period, they completed twenty-six demonstrations on buses or trains.[17] Out of these twenty-six demonstrations, six resulted in arrests. The members of this group received a great deal of publicity, and this marked the beginning of a long series of similar campaigns.[16][15][17]
The First "Freedom Ride"
In the early 1960's, James Farmer resumed his position as executive secretary of CORE, with the objective of replicating the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, only this time under a new name - the Freedom Ride.[17]
A Greyhound bus burns after being firebombed outside of Anniston, 14 May 1961.
On May 4, 1961, male and female participants started their journey through the deep South, testing segregated bus terminals as well. The riders were met with severe violence. In Anniston, Alabama, one of the buses was fire-bombed and passengers were beaten by a white mob. White mobs also attacked Freedom Riders in Birmingham and Montgomery.[18] The violence garnered national attention, sparking a summer of similar rides by CORE, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other civil rights organizations and thousands of ordinary citizens.[19]
In the 1960s, the Chicago chapter of CORE began to challenge racial segregation in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), addressing disparities in educational opportunities for African American students. By the late 1950s, the Chicago Board of Education's maintenance of the neighborhood school policy resulted in a pattern of racial segregation in the CPS. Predominantly black schools were situated in predominantly black neighborhoods on the south and west sides of the city, while predominantly white schools were located in predominantly white areas in the north, northwest and southwest sides of Chicago.[20]
Many segregated schools were very overcrowded. To ease this overcrowding, the Board instated double shifts at some of the schools which helped with the overcrowding but provided new issues. Double shifts meant that students in affected schools attended less than a full day of class. In another measure to alleviate overcrowding at some schools, the Board sanctioned the construction of mobile classroom units. Moreover, a significant proportion of students dropped out before finishing high school. Faculty was segregated, and many teachers in predominantly black schools lacked full-time teaching experience compared to teachers in white schools. In addition, the history curriculum did not mention African Americans. According to CORE, "school segregation [was] a damaging bacteria, a psychological handicap, which [festered] a disease generating widespread unemployment and crime in Chicago".[21]
Between 1960 and 1963, CORE diligently wrote letters addressing the conditions of schools to various authorities, including the Board of Education (led by Superintendent Benjamin Willis), Mayor Richard J. Daley, the Illinois House of Representatives, and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, advocating for improvements in educational equality. In addition, CORE attended the Board's school budget hearings, speaking against segregation and asking for the Board to implement transfer plans to desegregate the schools. In July 1963, CORE staged a week-long sit-in and protest at the Board office in downtown Chicago in response to the Board's inaction. Finally, Board President Claire Roddewig and Willis agreed to meet with CORE to negotiate integration, but no significant changes came to the schools.[22]
During the mid-1960s, CORE turned towards community involvement, seeking to equip Chicagoans with ways to challenge segregation. Freedom Houses, transfer petitions, community rallies and meetings served to educate Chicagoans about segregation and provide them with tools to circumnavigate the neighborhood school policy.[23]
By 1966, the Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Chicago's Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), had assumed control over civil rights demonstrations and negotiations. While CORE was a member organization of the CCCO, it increasingly lost influence over desegregation efforts. And when the Chicago Freedom Movement met with representatives of the city to negotiate in the summer of 1966, they agreed on ten fair housing reforms but did not discuss reforms to desegregate the schools. While CORE played no role in the housing summit, it had shifted towards promoting and developing Black power in Chicago. By the fall of 1966, CORE was no longer a civil rights organization, but a Black power organization. Changes in CORE's national leadership and continued inaction on behalf of the Board to desegregate the schools pushed CORE towards separatism and away from desegregation efforts. The chapter collapsed in October 1968.[citation needed]
Desegregating Durham
In 1962, CORE set up a headquarters in Durham, North Carolina where upon arrival, local black women activists, including Sadie Sawyer Hughley, welcomed them into their homes.[24] CORE worked with the local NAACP to organize pickets at Eckerd's Drug Store and Howard Johnson's. The goals were to increase employment opportunities for black workers and integrate local restaurants.
In 1963, the organization helped organize the famous March on Washington. On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people marched peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. At the end of the march Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.[25]
The following year, CORE along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped organize the "Freedom Summer" campaign—aimed principally at ending the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Operating under the umbrella coalition of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), volunteers from the three organizations concentrated their efforts in Mississippi. In 1962 only 6.7 percent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. This involved the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Over 80,000 people joined the party and 68 delegates attended the Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City and challenged the attendance of the all-white Mississippi representation.[26]
CORE, SNCC, and COFO collaborated to establish 30 Freedom Schools in towns across Mississippi. As a group, the three organizations collected volunteers that taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start.
Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. Three CORE activists, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on June 21, 1964 (seeMurders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner). These deaths created nationwide publicity for the campaign.[27][28]
Louisiana Chapter of CORE and The Support for Armed Self-Defense
CORE, at its heart, is an organization dedicated to non-violent philosophies and practices. In Louisiana, efforts were being made to increase voter registration among rural communities. Though their motives were noble, there was no national attention or support gathering around the work of the Louisiana members. As such, acts of violence or harassment against them often went unreported and the victims were not supported by the public. Compounding this issue, both the national and local government felt no responsibility to protect these members or supply federal intervention. These underlying issues in Louisiana stirred up support among local CORE members for the idea of allowing armed self-defense within their ranks.[29]
The idea of armed-self defense would be supported by CORE co-founder James Farmer after an incident in Plaquemine, Louisiana. On September 1, 1963 local police of Plaqumine threatened to lynch Farmer after a CORE demonstration in the city turned violent. As a result, he had to be smuggled out of the city accompanied by two armed men. After this event, Farmer would go on to permit armed guards to attend CORE meetings.[29]
Brooklyn Chapter of CORE
In New York City, the Brooklyn chapter of CORE was seen as one of the most radical chapters of CORE. This chapter employed increasingly aggressive tactics with a focus on racial discrimination. Primarily, the Brooklyn chapter of CORE used community-based activism which made it one of the most influential chapters in history. In 1964, the group held a Stall-In, deliberately preventing the flow of traffic to the World Fair with the goal of drawing attention to racial discrimination, which was one of their main focuses. Brooklyn's CORE's aggressive tactics would cause it to be suspended from the National CORE groups.[30]
Brooklyn's CORE used the slogan "Jim Crow Must Go" to raise awareness about the unequal schooling that African American children faced at this time as well as the overall unequal treatment of African Americans. While this slogan was typically associated with the south because they had Jim Crow Laws, using it in the north allowed Brooklyn's CORE leaders to gain public acknowledgement that the north also had racial discrimination issues, just as the south did.[31]
Kentucky Chapter of CORE
Beginning of CORE in Kentucky
CORE made significant strides in the civil rights movement in Kentucky, establishing its first chapter in Lexington in 1959. This chapter went on to be the strongest and longest-lasting chapter in Kentucky history. With other branches established in Louisville, Frankfort, Richmond, and Covington, CORE often collaborated with the NAACP and also other organizations that were a part of the same movement. One of the most notable collaborations with the NAACP was the successful challenge against Louisville’s residential segregation ordinance in the case Buchanan v. Warley on November 5, 1917.[32]
This victory marked a big turning point in the history of CORE, especially in the state of Kentucky. It attracted over 1,000 new members in Kentucky and was one of the first major civil rights victories. Although this was a big moment in Kentucky history, the NAACP had initiated direct action protests in Louisville even before CORE entered the state. This offered a base for the members of the CORE chapters in Kentucky to work off of and helped make strides in the movements of CORE.[32]
Movements Made in Kentucky
CORE provided more interracial cooperation than other organizations, especially in the Lexington chapter, which consisted of mostly teachers and clergymen from the University of Kentucky. Their inaugural sit-in on July 11, 1959, at the Varsity Village Restaurant near the University of Kentucky campus, attended by both black and white members, set a precedent for peaceful protest. Despite their nonviolent approach, resistance from store managers often resulted in violence. This led to training sessions that were in place to prepare demonstrators for physical and verbal abuse, which many of the members encountered at these early sit-ins. They used new strategies, such as the “integrated sandwich plan”, where African Americans would sit next to a white member and the white member would order them a sandwich. These acts were only available to them as they were a group that encouraged interracial cooperation. Overall, CORE's presence and outlook on protests catalyzed momentum for civil rights advancement in Kentucky.[32]
Harlem Chapter of CORE
At the same time in New York City, the Harlem chapter of CORE was very active in supporting African Americans in New York. The Harlem chapter joined forces with Columbia University's Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Mau Mau, and other Harlem residents in order to protest different causes that stemmed from institutionalized racism. One of these causes was the opposition of Columbia University's perceived complacency in surrounding the Vietnam War. These groups also voiced their opinions that they were not in support of the university making plans for the building of a gym in Morningside Park, and brought awareness to the lack of student involvement in discipline at Columbia University.[33] In addition to these efforts, the Harlem chapter of CORE gathered food and resources in Hamilton Hall, for the impoverished to use as needed.
March in Cicero, Illinois
On September 4, 1966, Robert Lucas and fellow members of CORE led activists through Cicero, Illinois, to pressure the city of Chicago's white leaders into making solid commitments to open housing. Shortly before the march, Chicago city officials, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, negotiated a Fair Housing agreement with Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, Al Raby and others in exchange for an end of demonstrations.[34] Robert Lucas and other members of CORE felt that the march was strategically necessary and proceeded with it anyway.[35] The march is documented in the 1966 short documentary film Cicero March, which was added to the National Film Registry in 2013.
Since 1966
CORE President Roy Innis (2nd from left) and then wife Doris Funnye Innis (center) with a delegation from CORE is greeted by Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta (left).
In 1966, James Farmer resigned as Director of CORE. He was replaced by Black Power advocate Floyd McKissick until 1968, when California activist Wilfred T. Ussery served a brief term as national chairman. He was replaced by Roy Innis, who was the National Chairman until his death in 2017.[36] Innis initially led the organization to strongly support black nationalism. However, subsequent political developments within the organization led it to support conservative political positions.[37]
The FBI's "COINTELPRO" program targeted civil rights groups, including the CORE, for infiltration, discreditation and disruption.[38] In August 1967, the FBI instructed its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize" what the FBI called "black nationalist hate groups" and other dissident groups.[39]
Winning victories in northern cities in the 1940s and 1950s, CORE became active in the South with the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. The following year CORE organized "Freedom Rides," sending black and white students south to disrupt segregated interstate bus service. Drawing much of its membership from college campuses, CORE kept up civil disobedience campaigns in the North as well as the South. They also organized activities in California, where they protested housing discrimination in San Francisco and Los Angeles, held a Western Region Conference in the Sacramento area, and launched an equal employment campaign at restaurants and stores throughout the state. In 1968, Seattle's chapter of CORE decided that, in order for it to function best in the community, it needed to be an all-black organization.
International activities
CORE has an African branch based in Uganda, with Fiona Kobusingye as its director.[43] Bringing attention to the malaria crisis is one of the organization's main activities. It has championed the use of DDT to fight the disease, and it has partnered with a variety of conservative and libertarianthink tanks in this effort.[44] In 2007, CORE organized a 300-mile walk across Uganda to promote DDT-based interventions against malaria.[45]
Criticism
According to an interview given by James Farmer in 1993, "CORE has no functioning chapters; it holds no conventions, no elections, no meetings, sets no policies, has no social programs and does no fund-raising. In my opinion, CORE is fraudulent."[46]
CORE has been criticized by environmentalist groups for its efforts promoting DDT use against malaria in Africa. A 2005 article in Mother Jones magazine accused the group of selling influence, writing that, "is better known among real civil rights groups for renting out its historic name to any corporation in need of a black front person. The group has taken money from the payday-lending industry, chemical giant (and original DDT manufacturer) Monsanto, and a reported $40,000 from ExxonMobil."[47][48] In his book, Not A Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, Donald Gutstein wrote that "In recent years CORE used its African-American facade to work with conservative groups to attack organizations like Greenpeace and undermine environmental regulation."[44]
↑ Meier, August & Rudwick, Elliot (1975). CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement. University of Illinois Press.
1 2 Nishani, Frazier (2017). Harambee City: the Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the rise of Black Power populism. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. pp.3–26. ISBN9781610756013. OCLC973832475.
↑ Sudarshan Kapur, Raising up a Prophet. The African-American encounter with Gandhi (Boston: Beacon Press 1992), pp. 117-123, 137-138, 162 (CORE and Farmer); 7-8, 120-122, 150 (Shridharani).
↑ Nishani, Frazier (2017). Harambee City: the Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the rise of Black Power populism. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. pp.135–140. ISBN9781610756013. OCLC973832475.
1 2 Nishani, Frazier (2017). Harambee City: the Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the rise of Black Power populism. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. pp.43–45. ISBN9781610756013. OCLC973832475.
↑ Greene, Christina (2005-01-01). Our separate ways: women and the Black freedom movement in Durham, North Carolina. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN9780807856000. OCLC65183735.
↑ "CORE Facts". Congress Of Racial Equality. Retrieved May 26, 2016.
↑ Nishani, Frazier (2017). Harambee City: the Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the rise of Black Power populism. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. pp.109–206. ISBN9781610756013. OCLC973832475.
1 2 Gutstein, Donald (November 24, 2009). Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy. Key Porter Books. ISBN978-1554701919. Relevant section excerpted at: Gutstein, Donald (January 22, 2010). "Inside the DDT Propaganda Machine". The Tyee. Retrieved 22 January 2010.
The civil rights movement was a social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century and had its modern roots in the 1940s. After years of direct actions and grassroots protests, the movement made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans. The social movement's span of time is called the civil rights era.
The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed African-American self-defense group founded in November 1964, during the civil rights era in the United States, in the mill town of Jonesboro, Louisiana. On February 21, 1965—the day of Malcolm X's assassination—the first affiliated chapter was founded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, followed by a total of 20 other chapters in this state, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. It was intended to protect civil rights activists and their families, threatened both by white vigilantes and discriminatory treatment by police under Jim Crow laws. The Bogalusa chapter gained national attention during the summer of 1965 in its violent struggles with the Ku Klux Klan.
James Leonard Farmer Jr. was an American civil rights activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement "who pushed for nonviolent protest to dismantle segregation, and served alongside Martin Luther King Jr." He was the initiator and organizer of the first Freedom Ride in 1961, which eventually led to the desegregation of interstate transportation in the United States.
Racial equality is when people of all races and ethnicities are treated in an egalitarian/equal manner. Racial equality occurs when institutions give individuals legal, moral, and political rights. In present-day Western society, equality among races continues to become normative. Prior to the early 1960s, attaining equality was difficult for African, Asian, and Indigenous people. However, in more recent years, legislation is being passed ensuring that all individuals receive equal opportunities in treatment, education, employment, and other areas of life. Racial equality can refer to equal opportunities or formal equality based on race or refer to equal representation or equality of outcomes for races, also called substantive equality.
George Mills Houser was an American Methodist minister, civil rights activist, and activist for the independence of African nations. He served on the staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (1940s–1950s).
The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
The Big Six—Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young—were the leaders of six prominent civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
Roy Emile Alfredo Innis was an American activist and politician. He was National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) from 1968 until his death.
Floyd Bixler McKissick was an American lawyer and civil rights activist. He became the first African-American student at the University of North Carolina School of Law. In 1966 he became leader of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, taking over from James Farmer. A supporter of Black Power, he turned CORE into a more radical movement. In 1968, McKissick left CORE to found Soul City in Warren County, North Carolina. He was an active Republican and endorsed Richard Nixon for president that year, and the federal government, under President Nixon, supported Soul City. He became a state district court judge in 1990 and died on April 28, 1991.
Elsie Bernice Fisher was a civil rights activist and union organizer. She was among the co-founders of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 in Chicago, Illinois.
The Journey of Reconciliation, also called "First Freedom Ride", was a form of nonviolent direct action to challenge state segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States. Bayard Rustin and 18 other men and women were the early organizers of the two-week journey that began on April 9, 1947. The participants started their journey in Washington, D.C., traveled as far south as North Carolina, before returning to Washington, D.C.
The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
George Raymond Jr. was an African-American civil rights activist, a member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a Freedom Rider, and head of the Congress of Racial Equality in Mississippi in the 1960s. Raymond influenced many of Mississippi's most known activists, such as Anne Moody, C. O. Chinn, and Annie Devine to join the movement and was influential in many of Mississippi's most notable Civil Rights activities such as a Woolworth's lunchcounter sit-in and protests in Jackson, Mississippi, Meredith Mississippi March, and Freedom Summer. Raymond fought for voting rights and equality for African Americans within society amongst other things.
Who Speaks for the Negro? is a 1965 book of interviews by Robert Penn Warren conducted with Civil Rights Movement activists. The book was reissued by Yale University Press in 2014. The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University created the Who Speaks for the Negro? digital archive featuring digitized versions of the original reel-to-reel recordings that Warren compiled for each of his interviewees as well as print materials related to the project, including the transcripts of those recordings, letters written between Warren and the interviewees, and contemporary reviews of the book.
This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.
David J. Dennis is a civil rights activist whose involvement began in the early 1960s. Dennis grew up in the segregated area of Omega, Louisiana. He worked as co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), as director of Mississippi's Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and as one of the organizers of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. Dennis worked closely with both Bob Moses and Medgar Evers as well as with members of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His first involvement in the Civil Rights Movement was at a Woolworth sit-in organized by CORE and he went on to become a Freedom Rider in 1961. Since 1989, Dennis has put his activism toward the Algebra Project, a nonprofit organization run by Bob Moses that aims to improve mathematics education for minority children. Dennis also speaks publicly about his experiences in the movement through an organization called Dave Dennis Connections.
Oretha Castle Haley was an American civil rights activist in New Orleans where she challenged the segregation of facilities and promoted voter registration. She came from a working-class background, yet was able to enroll in the Southern University of New Orleans, SUNO, then a center of student activism. She joined the protest marches and went on to become a prominent activist in the Civil Rights Movement.
Doris Jean Castle was a civil rights activist who helped with the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She aided African Americans across the New Orleans area alongside her sister, Oretha Castle Haley. Castle was one of the youngest Freedom Riders in New Orleans. She was only seventeen years old when she started fighting for civil rights activism.
The sit-in movement, sit-in campaign, or student sit-in movement, was a wave of sit-ins that followed the Greensboro sit-ins on February 1, 1960, led by students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical Institute (A&T). The sit-in movement employed the tactic of nonviolent direct action and was a pivotal event during the Civil Rights Movement.
May Childs Nerney was an American civil rights activist and librarian. She was the secretary of the NAACP from 1912 to 1916, overseeing a large increase in the organization's size. She led protests against the segregation of federal government employees in Washington, D.C., and against the film The Birth of a Nation (1915). Nerney came into conflict with several members of the organization and resigned in 1916. She later worked on cataloging Thomas Edison's papers and published a 1934 biography on him, Thomas A. Edison, A Modern Olympian. She also worked with the League of Women Voters, the board of the Young Women's Christian Association, the Consumers Cooperative Services, and the New York Philharmonic Society.
References
Meier, August; Rudwick, Elliott M. (1975). CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968. University of Illinois Press. ISBN9780252005671.
Frazier, Nishani (2017). Harambee City: Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism. University of Arkansas Press. ISBN1682260186.
Harambee City: Archival site incorporating documents, maps, audio/visual materials related to CORE's work in black power and black economic development.
The Frank J. Miranda Papers document Miranda's activities as CORE activist and one-time chair of the Boston CORE chapter. Located in the Archives and Special Collections of the Northeastern University Libraries in Boston, MA.
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