Raised by a professor who taught divinity at Howard University, James Farmer Jr. was a pacifist who sought to achieve racial justice through nonviolent activism. Often a target of racial violence, Farmer helped to shape the Civil Rights Movement when he launched The Freedom Rides to challenge the efforts to block the desegregation of interstate busing.
The national director and co-founder of the first Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1942, Farmer set the foundation for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in the mid-1960s.
He spent 41 days in Mississippi jails. One of the most memorable moments of that time, he said, was when those jailed alongside him in steel and concrete cells with straw-filled mattresses sang freedom songs together, despite being threatened by guards.