In February 2024, I wrote up how James Farmer tested his detailed plan on how to implement Gandhi’s tactics of nonviolent resistance in Chicago in 1943, long before the Montgomery Bus Boycott or later and more famous lunch counter sit ins. It’s been mentioned before, but I found the detailed strategy in the Chicago Defender. I thought they were fascinating, especially the relays forcing the hand of the downtown restaurant. Check out that story in the Hyde Park Herald.
Because I wanted to focus on Farmer and the early days, I didn’t include some of the fun photos I found of Bernie Sanders when he was the head of the campus CORE committee and going after the University of Chicago itself. CORE had discovered that the apartment buildings that the university had bought during urban renewal were red lined. If a team of Black CORE members showed up, they were told there were no vacancies. If a team of white CORE members showed up, they were immediately shown around. The university said they were maintaining segregation to prevent white flight but Bernie Sanders wasn’t having any of it. A team of 33 CORE members occupied the Administration Building and wouldn’t leave. And he had endurance. His freshman year he’d been on the track and field team.
A friend of mine who was involved with CORE at the time, Sue Purrington, said the community members were bringing them take-out. The university got them to leave when they said they’d form a committee to study the matter. Sanders was furious when he realized that a university committee was designed not to do anything.
When he was running for president in 2019, he remembered this time. He said at a campaign stop at Navy Pier that it taught him that change never comes from the top down. It always comes from pressure from below. The CORE committee at the University of Chicago and Sanders went on to tackle the horrible conditions in Chicago Public Schools during the Baby Boom overcrowding and desegregation. Unfortunately, the Chicago Public Schools are still an issue.
Patricia L. Morse 