WHO IS JAMES FARMER, JR.
BUS TOUR OF MARSHALL AND WILEY
Dr. Ben Voth, the director of debate and associate professor at Southern Methodist University will be leading an educational tour of Marshall Texas and the campus of Wiley College on Friday January 11, 2019. This tour is in association with his SMU class entitled: “Ethnoviolence.” The class studies various significant acts of human violence ranging from the Holocaust, to lynchings, the Rwandan genocide, the killing of Dallas police officers in 2016, a variety of 20th century genocides, and even the assassination of JFK in Dallas. The course emphasizes the role of individual human idealism in overcoming these terribly tragedies so evident in the 20th century. James Farmer Jr. was born in Marshall, Texas on January 12, 1920 and his collegiate education in debate at Wiley College laid the cornerstone of American Civil Rights by teaching him about argumentation and non-violent civil disobedience. Those ingredients became the key points for advocating against segregation in the United States between 1942 and 1968.
This tour will take place on the eve of Farmer’s 99th birthday. Farmer was one of the big four Civil Rights leaders alongside Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins. In many respects, Farmer was a pivotal pioneer in creating non-violent direct action as a method for stopping segregation in public accommodations in the United States, beginning at Jack Sprat restaurant in Chicago in 1942. The role of this Southern Methodist, born in Texas is emphasized in the course as a radical yet practical method for reducing global and local ethnoviolence. His methods were directly adapted from research on the efforts of Gandhi in India. The bus tour will leave the SMU campus around 9am and return to the campus by about 4pm. There are some extra seats available on the bus for those who would like to hear more about this incredible heroic story originating in Texas.
For more information, contact Dr. Voth:
See also Dr. Voth’s 2017 to book:
James Farmer Jr: The Great Debater
this award winning book follows up the excellent movie by Denzel Washington to explain what happened with the life of Farmer after he graduated Wiley College
HISTORICAL MARKER FOR J. FARMER, JR.
On May 1, 2017 at 5pm, my friend Gail Beil who has argued for decades for the increased appreciation of civil rights hero James Farmer Jr. was able to unveil a historical marker erected by the state of Texas in his honor.
We were joined for the dedication of the marker by the last living Freedom Rider: Hank Thomas. He gave eloquent remarks and never before revealed details about the time he spent with Farmer in Parchman prison in Mississippi during the Freedom Rides of 1961. Thomas behaved heroically during the violent siege of the Freedom Ride bus at Aniston when he helped other riders escape the burning bus attacked by violent racial segregationist on Mothers Day 1961.
Thomas explained in his speech at the dedication that considerable psychological pressures were applied to Farmer in order to break him of his mission to defeat segregation by filling the jails of the segregationist governments. While in prison at Parchman, Farmer was ordered to walk naked to his cell at the end of the row of cells where he would find his prison clothes. Thomas explained that Farmer was ordered to the cell further away in order to publicly humiliate Farmer as he walked naked past other inmates. Thomas saw Farmer walking and noted that he kept his chin high and did not look down as a show of confidence and a refusal to be humiliated by his jailers.
Thomas also explained that the FBI provided Farmer with alleged written communication between new boyfriends his wile Lula had acquired while he was in jail. Farmer was not deceived by these FBI deceptions according to Thomas because he knew Lula’s handwriting. Thomas explained that this tactic was demonstrative of how far the government was willing to go to try to crush Farmer’s movement.
It was an incredible day in Marshall to see the memorial finally dedicated. The marker is placed in front of the Paramount movie theater where James Farmer Jr. was segregated while a college student at Wiley College. In his biography, Lay Bare the Heart, Farmer repeatedly pointed to these events at the theater as formative and intrinsically motivating to his decades long struggle against segregation.
LECTURE AT UCLA
50 minutes of lecture
45 minutes of questions and answers
UCLA Farmer speech 10/15/65 com dept
colleges can come up with ideas [14 minutes]
rising expectations make discrimination worse
crisis 18:24
churches school
no ghetto recruitment
watts
speaking for others [20]
hard to do
native son Wright
get over a sense of hopelessness
slums and ghettos
segregation came down like Jericho [25]
housing is getting worse
school defacto segregation is greater now
economic progress was happening
George Wallace rapid strides
10x Africa
gap widened
narrowed during the war
after war widened
1950 53% pay of whites
1961 52% pay of whites
automation takes jobs
UE among negroes 2.5% higher than whites increasing at same rate
his own private negro
hertz rent a negro program [31]
police brutality
fabricating dream up
police experience [32]
white kids think police are friends cannot conceive of brutality
slum dweller is difference even as whites
harassment by police
verbal abuse
war on poverty [35]
cannot be controlled by politicians
long range war
representatives of the poor
only way a man can be freed
freed man is not freed not do it himself
must free himself
compared to holocaust [36]
revolution of the powerless
techniques and public relations used
easier way is through political power
votes are not wasted
urging independent political action
we support Mississippi freedom democratic party
nominations and election
criteria is not the color of the man skin but where he stands on issues 38:30
party bosses WE may endorse a Republican [audience applause] [39:30]
40% of vote in Cleveland is black
i don’t care if he is black or white as long as he fights on the issues
negroes in business
businesses should be started in slums
get loans from small biz loan federal government
not a rival to white economy
participate in all aspects of American business
credit union
agricultural coops
visited Israel last January 1964
buy some land
work land cooperative buy mechanized equipment
cooperatives in Mississippi in Tennessee
remedial education
if i am not for myself who am i [46]
rabbi HILLEL
if not now then when
Q&A session 47
Don Smith LA CORE
stereotypes [57]
party switch for blacks
1:02 republican vs black
more based on policies and rely on party less
African American Republican leaders left Goldwater in 64
opposed Vietnam resolution 1:08
CORE should not take that position— hurt broad base
white liberals struggle 1:20
CORE whites hard on white liberals
coalition building
puerto ricans
mexican americans
non violent training
Who killed Malcolm X 135 [cuts off full answer]