The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

REQUIRED READING

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in the spring of 1942 in Chicago by James Farmer along with a racially diverse group of liberals, pacifists, socialists, and religious groups, most of whom were college students. From its origin and expansion throughout the country, CORE was committed to interracialism and nonviolent direct action. With branches from Brooklyn to Seattle, CORE was a major organization in the struggle for civil rights and racial justice in the mid-twentieth century. 

One of the first major actions was a sit-in at Bullock’s Broadway stores tea room on Saturday, June 28, 1947, when members took up twenty tables from 11:30am-3:30pm. Black people were not being served in this establishment, nor were the racially mixed tables. Some sympathetic whites refused service until the Black people were served, with some whites asking to be notified how they can be involved to address such racial injustice. CORE, with support from other groups, visited the tea room weekly to protest the lack of service for Black people. As a result of protests and civil suits brought against Bullock’s, the plaintiffs won a $425,000 suit against the store. In addition, CORE chairman Manuel Talley stated that in early August “approximately 100 persons organized by CORE returned to the store for one of their customary ‘sit-ins’, for the first time Negroes were ‘served’ promptly. Even hurriedly.”

CORE continued to address employment discrimination, such as the joint CORE-National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) campaign for truck drivers’ jobs in the spring of 1958. With the inability to loosen the teamsters hold, CORE redirected its efforts to testing motels to see if they accepted Black guests. Earl Walters, head of Los Angeles CORE said they, “tested 70 hotels and motels to see if they would accept Negroes, and took about a dozen to court.” He continued reporting, “In 1957, upward of 70% would not accept Negroes” but by 1963 “better than 65% will.” CORE also supported the Los Angeles committee for the Youth March for Integrated Schools which held a rally on Saturday April 18, 1959, to “demonstrate local support for speedier integration of the nation’s schools” after the Brown v. Board decision.

On February 1, 1960, four Black students from North Carolina Agriculture and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina, staged sit-ins at a Woolworths lunch counter. They refused to move from the lunch counters until the counters were desegregated. After purchasing items from other parts of the store to establish they were paying customers and not trespassing, these youth demanded to be served like the white patrons. This sit-in would launch over 200 sit-ins throughout the South. That March CORE sent field secretary James McCain west to Portland, Oregon, to Berkley, and Los Angeles to assist local chapters with organizing solidarity demonstrations against the chain variety stores. The CORE-led demonstrations included groups such as the NAACP, the International Ladies Garment Workers (ILGWU), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the American Jewish Congress. 

They organized to picket Woolworths in Santa Monica and Downtown Los Angeles. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “They marched up and down in front of the stores carrying signs reading ‘Kress- Stop Supporting Segregation’, ‘We Protest Woolworth’s Southern Policy’, ‘Did They Die in Vain at Gettysburg?’, and ‘Woolworth’s- Let My People Eat’.” This exhibition of nonviolent direct action put theory into practice by seeking 1.) disruption of the status quo; 2.) bringing negative attention to the company ultimately affecting profits; and 3.) the attention of decision makers to make the desired legislative and policy-oriented changes.

Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, the murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, “The Little Rock Nine” integrating Central High School in Arkansas, and President Dwight Eisenhower signing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 were some of the major events contributing to the Black Freedom Movement in the 1950s. Farrell reveals the hope and faith of a generation believing that, through nonviolent direct-action protests and demonstrations, radical changes to racially discriminatory de jure and de facto laws would occur.

As the sit-in solidarity campaigned waned, CORE chapters shifted attention to assisting sharecroppers in the South. In Fayette and Haywood counties in Southwestern Tennessee, voter registration campaigns had been so successful that the white community retaliated with severe economic repression. Joining chapters in St. Louis, New York, and Chicago, Los Angeles CORE solicited donations of food and clothing for the 400 economically oppressed families in Haywood County and Fayette County in Tennessee. 

QUESTIONS

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