Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in Chicago in 1942 by white and black student activists, including the first chairman, James Farmer. It began as an informal organization for which "voluntary contributions from the members served as the only source of funding" (Nadasen, 2005). The organization rose to prominence in 1947 after participating in the "Journey of Reconconcilliation--a two-week trip into the Upper South to test the 1946 Morgan Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which outlawed segregation in interstate travel" (Nadasen, 2005). The protest led to the incarceration of three CORE members and subsequently led to national recognition of the organization. Eventually, CORE became part of the "Big Four:" the four most influential Civil Rights Movement organizations of the time, alongside the SNCC, the Urban League, and the NAACP.

Following the Brown v. Board ruling, CORE contributed significantly to school integration practices throughout the country which faced different school segregation practices. The South operated under de jure segregation which included Jim Crow laws and "separate but equal" facilities. Although the 1954 SCOTUS decision outlawed racially segregated schools, it took years and several local and district court rulings to begin integrating public schools. The organization's newsletter, CORE-LATOR, served as an influential news magazine that documented the unjust and hostile treatment directed towards African-American schoolchildren and their families. (News clippings from the CORE-LATOR contributed greatly to this exhibit.) By contrast, the North operated under de facto segregation which was not mandated by law but rather by social customs and residential patterns. Although, school desegregation policies were primarily focused on southern states in the mid to late 1950's, by the 1960's CORE began to challenge de facto school segregation.

Sources: 

Nadases, Premilla "Congress of Racial Equality", 1996, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., version 2005.