THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510060616
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 188 lines
Even before diabetes left James Farmer blind, he didn't consult history books to teach his Mary Washington College students about civil rights history.
He didn't need to; he helped make the history.
Farmer, now 75, easily flips through a thick mental text of his life's accomplishments, chapters which have left strong imprints on American life:
In the 1940s, Farmer formed the Congress of Racial Equality, which used nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation before Martin Luther King Jr. made the philosophy famous.
CORE and Farmer led the perilous Freedom Rides of the early 1960s to test the enforcement of desegregation in interstate transportation.
Farmer germinated the idea of ``compensatory preferential treatment,'' which would later become the federal government's affirmative action policy.
He emerged as one of the Big Four leaders of the civil rights movement, alongside King, Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Whitney Young, head of the National Urban League. He is the only survivor.
A few months ago, Farmer's lower right leg was amputated because of complications with diabetes. But he still catches a cab to teach at the college, which is 12 miles from his home. He maintains a class roster of more than 250 kids, more than any other professor in the history department, and has an assistant read term papers aloud to him.
In an interview with staff writer Denise Watson at his Fredericksburg home, Farmer reflected on his role in the civil rights movement and the status of black America on the eve of what many consider another historical milestone, the Million Man March set for Oct. 16 in Washington.
What do you think about Colin Powell possibly running for president?
Well, he's for affirmative action. The question was raised, I didn't hear it, but someone asked him, `How can you run as a Republican? How can you support the Republican party when you support affirmative action?' His response was, `Well if I run on the Republican line, I would do it only after we sat down and negotiated certain issues and one of those would be affirmative action.' So I was really pleased with that. If he supports it, then we have a chance.
But everybody loves him and that can't last. It's encouraging, but I don't believe it.
I don't believe all of the people who say they would vote for Powell will do it when the time comes. Once they get into the voting booth, they'll stop and think. . . , `Do I really want to put an African American in the White House?'
I think he'd run better than Jesse (Jackson) because he's certainly saying things people like, more than Jesse. But I don't see how in the long haul he can continue to say what this broad group of supporters wants to hear. He'll have to get more specific on more issues and then an increasing number would stop applauding.
Are African Americans further along than you thought they'd be in 1995?
Oh, yes. Much further along. I would not have dreamed in my lifetime of a black man running ahead of all contenders in the polls. That is progress. I think Jesse can take some credit. He began this by showing that is not a fantasy for a black man to be running for president. It can be realistic. So that set the stage for Powell.
What are your thoughts on the upcoming Million Man March?
I'm keeping my fingers crossed. . . . The thing I'm worried about aren't the people marching but the agents of provocateur.
I hope (the leaders) will introduce an agenda, and I hope they have given a lot of thought to it, a lot of time to it. It shouldn't be a one-man program but something hammered together by a varied group of people from the black community including black academics, black scholars, black thinkers, activists.
Any other thoughts on the Million Man March?
There will be very stirring rhetoric, but what's needed is programs. I just hope that the march won't be a substitute for programs. I would ask the question if marching is the most appropriate strategy today. The great march of `63 was necessary and had perfect timing. I didn't speak there. I was in jail. I was in the slammer, but I did watch it on TV.
I had a letter read by Floyd McKissick, chairman of CORE. Young and Wilkins sent me a wire, urging me to bail out of jail to speak, but a lot of local people were in jail with me, marching in the march I was in when we got arrested and they wanted to go to the march, too. We didn't have the money to bail all of them out, so I chose not to bail out. That was one biggest mistake of my life.
Why do you say that?
It was the only opportunity I would have to speak to a worldwide audience. Organizations there from Africa, Asia, Europe, but I chose to sit it out. He read the letter, which was well-received.
Are there times when you look back on your life and think, ``Wow, I can't believe I did that.''
There are a lot of things I wish I hadn't done and a lot of things I wish I would've. One thing I should've done in the months prior to 1961 or in the early months of 1962 was to try a merger of CORE and SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee).
I encountered many of the SNCC people in jail in Alabama, so I had their respect and they had my respect and love. I could've called for a merger and had a chance of getting it. I think that would've added more steam to the civil rights movement.
You said a minute ago you weren't sure if this march is what is needed, we might need another strategy?
What is needed is a program to rehabilitate the black family. That's a very complicated program, a program that deals with our young people long before they get in Head Start. . . . There's much that can be done prenatally to rehabilitate our culture. I think that's what's needed more than a march.
However, I'm not opposed to the march. . . . But I hope the planners of the march will have a program in mind so that in their speeches they can do much more than bemoan the terrible plight of the black male. . . . The million, or half a million that will be there, . . . they want the speakers to tell them what to do when they go home.
One of the complaints you hear within and about the black community is that African Americans are missing the leadership they had in the `60s.
Ah, leaders are made by the circumstances. The circumstances were such in the '50s and '60s, nothing's clearer than problems of Jim Crow.
We could see the enemy plainly. We could identify him, `There he is! And what is he going to do? He's going to beat our heads and throw us off of buses!' It was very clear then, and there was agreement on strategy and objectives. Well, agreement more on objectives than strategy but, by and large, there was agreement on strategy. We were not going to take up any guns and shoot.
Circumstances?
Circumstances produce leadership. I think there are people around today who are just as bright as we were and as good as leaders in many ways as we were, but they are dealing with issues that are far more complex.
We had it simple sitting at the lunch counter being served, sitting in the front seat of a bus and not being thrown off. All we had to do to achieve the objectives was to convince the federal government to enforce its laws or make new laws that would do it. . . . But now we're dealing with issues like how to close the income gap and no amount of sit-ins or freedom rides will do that.
Some of these issues are not clearly good versus bad, or right versus wrong.
Sometimes you have two rights in opposition. For example, affirmative action and the Bakke case. Who was right? Bakke or the University of California (Medical School) at Davis?
The university was right when they wanted those positions (for minorities). In certain parts of the country, such as the rural areas in the South, the persons who are likely to go to those areas to practice medicine would be young blacks doctors. They will go for two or three years to practice, to give back to the community what that community has given to them and then they'd move on to make their million. (laughs)
(The University) was trying to speak to the need.
Bakke was right, too. If he had studied hard through high school and college and then he was refused admission and some of the blacks who had scored lower on the tests were admitted, no wonder he was mad. I couldn't blame him. He had a right to expect to get into medical school and he did, but it took a little while.
So those were two rights, running head on, what do you do in a case like that? What you have to do is make a judgment on the basis of what right is more in keeping with public policy at that particular point in history. And with that criteria in mind, I would say that the University of California Davis was more right than Bakke.
Both are right but as George Orwell says, `All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.' (laughs).
You mentioned earlier that the issues of today are more complex. That's interesting. There aren't many today who feel like they're risking life and limb if they make a stand on an issue, like you and others did.
Like I said, what we did was easy. . . . Furthermore, you could tell when you were winning. If you were sitting at a lunch counter and nobody beat you up and no one threw you out, you had won that issue. But now you don't know. You seem to close the gap here and it seems to grow wider somewhere else. So its harder to tell how much progress you've made. I had thought for some time of setting up a think tank which would determine the rate of progress or regression we've made on any issue whether its employment or education and in what section of the country.
I would call the magazine we would put out the Minority Progress Index and monitor the progress. We were never able to raise the money.
But people who are leaders are making wild statements that we're moving backward fast, in all areas across the board. Others will say we're making real progress. Both are wrong.
If the issues of today are more difficult and you admit times are frustrating, how do you keep hope alive?
That's a responsibility of leadership. Leadership thus far hasn't done it. I didn't say that we could've done it, the leaders of the '60s. . . . It was easy to keep hope alive then because hope has a motivation, the Bull Connors, if you will. The Ku Klux Klan. We were provided with a plentiful group of martyrs, people getting killed every month in the struggle. And you can organize on the basis of martyrs and you're motivated when you have an enemy like Bull Connor. Someone suggested that the NAACP should've given Bull Connor its Spingard Medal for the year 1963 because he did more than anybody else to help us organize and push us forward. . . . And we don't have that today so we have to find other motivations. ILLUSTRATION: TOMMY PRICE COLOR PHOTOS
KEYWORDS: CIVIL RIGHTS PROFILE BIOGRAPHY
INTERVIEW by CNB