[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 114 (Thursday, August 5, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1782-E1783]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          REMEMBERING AND HONORING THE SERVICE OF JAMES FARMER

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. MAX SANDLIN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, August 5, 1999

  Mr. SANDLIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a recipient 
of the Presidential Medal of Honor, an honored American, and a true 
leader. When we think of the civil rights movement, certain names often 
come to mind. The names Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks are easy to 
remember, but I think of a man who was born in the town I call home: 
Marshall, Texas.
  This man was a behind-the-scenes organizer. He was the last living 
member of the ``Big Four'' who shaped the civil rights movement in the 
mid 1950s and 1960s. He founded the Congress of Racial Equality in the 
1940s. He organized countless demonstrations and sit-ins. He directed 
the Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate bus stations in the South 
in 1961. He served with the NAACP, the US Department of Health, 
Education and Welfare and taught at several colleges. He was awarded 
over 22 honorary doctorates, and in 1998, he earned the Presidential 
Medal of Freedom. This man was James Farmer.
  Mr. Farmer was the son of a Methodist minister and professor of 
Theology at Wiley College. At 14, on a full scholarship, he went to 
Wiley College to study medicine only to find that he could not stand 
the sight of blood. Perhaps more in line with his calling, Mr. Farmer 
left medicine behind to study religion at Howard University, where he 
became acquainted with the civil disobedience methods employed by 
Ghandi. However, upon graduation, he found that he had no desire to 
minister in a

[[Page E1783]]

church that actively practiced segregation. It was this realization 
that pushed him into civil rights activism.
  In 1942, he founded the Congress of Racial Equality in Chicago, and 
in 1947, he held the first Freedom Ride. He was beaten, arrested, and 
served time in prison. He was encouraged to let things settle down in 
the South, to let them cool off. Mr. Farmer, however, refused to back 
down. In 1963 he was attacked at a demonstration he had organized in 
Louisiana. State troopers came after him with guns, cattle prods, and 
tear gas, but he escaped with the help of a funeral director who drove 
him through the police cordon in a hearse. Although he had planned to 
attend the March On Washington, he was arrested in Louisiana for 
disturbing the peace and had to settle for watching Martin Luther King 
make him famous ``I Have a Dream'' speech on the television.
  After the leadership of the Congress of Racial Equality changed 
hands, he surprised some civil rights leaders by joining the Nixon 
administration as an assistant secretary in the Department of Health, 
Education and Welfare. He knew that if African Americans were ever to 
have any say in national policy on race, then they had to be active in 
the government. Mr. Farmer recognized the potential in the position and 
used it to persuade the administration to approve funds for the Head 
Start program in Southern States. His response to those who thought he 
was abandoning the movement was that he saw himself as a bridge. ``I 
lived in two worlds. One was the volatile and explosive one of the new 
black Jacobins and the other was the sophisticated and genteel world of 
the white and black liberal establishment. As a bridge, I was called on 
by each side for help in contacting the other.''

  Indeed, Mr. Farmer's concept of two worlds was what fueled his 
passion for equality. He often reminisced of his childhood before and 
after he became aware of discrimination. Growing up around colleges, he 
was sheltered from much of the racism that surrounded him. It wasn't 
until he discovered that he couldn't go wherever he wanted that he even 
realized he was any different from others.
  At three years old, what he wanted was a soda, not social change. 
Given his young age and his sheltered upbringing, he couldn't 
understand why he couldn't use the money his father had given him to go 
and buy one at the drug store on the way home. He cried and pleaded to 
no avail. Finally his mother told him he couldn't buy a soda because it 
was a ``whites-only'' drug store, and he wasn't allowed to enter. Then 
she cried. And that was the day that young Mr. Farmer became determined 
to do something about it. He vowed to destroy segregation.
  It was this same determination that got him through sitting in the 
``buzzard's roost,'' the segregated balcony in the cinema near Wiley 
College. And it was this same determination that put him on board the 
Freedom Ride to Jackson, Mississippi. He later called his organization 
of the Freedom Ride his proudest achievement.
  Mr. Farmer had many achievements of which to be proud. I consider it 
an honor to have been a part of the driving force behind his most 
recent accomplishment which occurred just last year. On January 15, 
1998, President Clinton awarded James Farmer the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom, the highest civilian honor the United States of America gives. 
For Mr. Farmer, it was the crowning moment on a rich past of activism 
and determination. ``It's a vindication, an acknowledgment at long 
last. I'm grateful it came before I died.'' At 79, Mr. Farmer finally 
received his soda.
  As we celebrate the life of James Farmer, let us remember one of his 
last lessons to us all. He said that we have beaten segregation, we 
have beaten Jim Crow. Now we have to beat racism, and it's going to 
take all of us to do it.

                          ____________________