54 coaches online • Server time: 20:03
James Leonard Farmer, Jr. (January 12, 1920 – July 9, 1999) was a civil rights activist, a leader of the American civil rights movement of the 1940s, '50s and '60s, and the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride which eventually led to the desegregration of inter-state busing in the United States.
In 1942, Farmer and a group of students co-founded the Committee of Racial Equality, later known as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an organization that sought to bring an end to racial segregation in America through active nonviolence. Farmer was the organization's first leader, serving as the national chairman from 1942 to 1944. He held the position as an honorary chairman in the Democratic Socialists of America.