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James Leonard Farmer Jr. was born in Marshall Texas
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Farmer graduated from Wiley College with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry.
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Farmer graduates from Howard University School of Theology with a bachelor of divinity.
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James Farmer and others form the Committee of Racial Equality (CORE). This organization stood for racial justice, and protesting non-violently. Organized one of the first major sit-ins at Jack Spratt Coffee House in Chicago.
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Farmer started working for the Upholsterers International Union, helping to organize mill workers in North Carolina and Virginia. (1945 - 1947)
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Farmer became program director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He wanted the NAACP to take direct action and organize protests. (1959 - 1961)
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Under the leadership of James Farmer, thirteen volunteers leave Washington D.C, for a bus trip through the South to protest segregation in interstate transportation. Supreme Court Cases (Morgan v. Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia) had ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The South ignored the ruling and the federal government did nothing to enforce it.
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Farmer is arrested in Plaquemine, Louisiana, during a series of demonstrations and protests against police brutality.
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Farmer publishes his book Freedom—When? In which he discusses the civil rights movement and his experiences.
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President Bill Clinton awards James Farmer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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James Farmer dies from diabetes at Fredericksburg hospital.
