The Birth of CORE

CORE Button
CORE Button

The Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded on this date in 1942. CORE is an American interracial voluntary organization established by James Farmer to undertake direct-action projects to improve race relations and end discriminatory policies.

Farmer had been working as the race-relations secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, but resigned over a dispute in policy; he founded CORE as a vehicle for the nonviolent approach to combating racial prejudice that was inspired by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. CORE members held a sit-in at a coffee shop in Chicago in their founding year; it was one of the first of its kind in the United States. Other CORE projects have included voter registration drives in the South and actions to deal with a wide range of community issues in the North.

Read more about C.O.R.E. here.

Learn about Bayard Rustin, who worked with CORE.

More Black rights news.

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