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Congress of Racial Equality
2 articles on Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 1129 Includes: BibliographyAmerican civil rights organization that pioneered the strategy of nonviolent direct action, especially the tactics of sit-ins, jail-ins, and Freedom Rides. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 as the Committee of Racial Equality by an interracial group of students in Chicago, Illinois. Many of these students were members of the Chicago branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a pacifist organization seeking to change racist attitudes. The founders of CORE were deeply influenced by Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi's teachings of nonviolent resistance.CORE started as a nonhierarchical, decentralized organization funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of its members. The organization was initially co-led by white University of Chicago student George ...
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Source: The Oxford Companion to United States History
Word Count: 439The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the most important national organizations of the post-World War II African American freedom movements, was founded by an interracial group of pacifists in 1942. Committed to nonviolent direct action and interracial activism, CORE first launched protests against racial segregation in public accommodations in the North. In 1947, CORE activists undertook the Journey of Reconciliation, riding buses into the South to test a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in interstate travel facilities. Although mob violence stopped the trip in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the project served as a model for CORE's 1961 Freedom Rides.Initially a mostly white organization in the Northeast and Midwest, CORE expanded into the South after the Montgomery Bus Boycott of ...
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