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1920 - 1999
Birthplace: Marshall, Tex.
The son of a preacher, Farmer attended Howard University's School of Divinity. In 1942 he founded the Congress of Racial Equality(CORE), a civil rights organization that was the first in the United States to use nonviolent tactics to protest racial discrimination. In 1961, under the leadership of Farmer, the group organized "Freedom Rides" throughout the South. Volunteers traveled on interstate buses, with the blacks using the restaurants, restrooms, and waiting areas reserved for whites, and the whites using colored facilities. Attacked by mobs on several occasions, the Freedom Riders challenged the federal government to enforce the anti-segregation legislation that had recently been passed. Farmer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedomby President Bill Clinton in 1998.
James Farmer movie planned
Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfreyto direct, produce film about civil-rights pioneer James Farmer's youth and his role in college-debate stunner.
The compelling story of the late civil-rights leader James Farmer, a longtime Spotsylvania County resident, has finally caught the attention of Hollywood.
A young Farmer will be featured in an upcoming film to be directed by Denzel Washington. A spokeswoman for Miramax in New York confirmed this week that "The Great Debaters" is being developed as a studio project; a production company owned by Oprah Winfrey also will be involved.
No release date has been set, but it could be in theaters as early as 2006.
Farmer, who was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1998 for his leadership during the civil-rights movement, taught history at Mary Washington College for 14 years prior to his death in 1999.
He founded the Congress of Racial Equality in Chicago in 1942 and was one of the "Big Four" leaders of the civil-rights movement, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkinsand Whitney Young.
The film is to be a "David and Goliath" story about tiny black Wiley College beating Harvard in 1935, Washington told the Marshall (Texas) News Messenger during a visit to the campus there in September.
The Academy Award-winning actor said it will be a coming-of-age story about Farmer, who in the film falls in love with a female student on the debate team.
"She's like 19. He was only 15," said Washington, who does not plan to act in the film. Farmer, who was born in Marshall and raised in Austin, Texas, skipped years of school and started college at age 14.
The film will focus on Wiley professor and debate coach Melvin B. Tolson, and his team, including Farmer, which defeated Harvard in the 1930s.
"The script came across my desk maybe a year ago," Washington told the Marshall paper. "I thought it would be just a really wonderful story to tell. It's about the spoken word--something you don't see much in film--and about education and about debating."
Washington said this part of the story of blacks in America needs to be told--that there is a huge gap between the end of the Civil Warand the climax of the civil-rights struggle in 1964.
He also said the spoken word is an important part of current hip-hop culture, and the debating film shows the roots of that tradition.
"Our oral history is rich and deep, and debating is a big part of it, a part I didn't know about. It's something I want to share on the film with others," he told the Marshall paper.
Detine Bowers, a former Stafford County resident now an Austin writer, told The Free Lance-Star she is working on a narrative documentary about Farmer that she said will be shown in theaters with "The Great Debaters."
In his later years, when he was blind and in a wheelchair, Farmer often expressed concern that history would forget him.
He staged the first sit-in of the civil rights movement while King was still a schoolboy. He organized the Freedom Rides that forced the desegregation of interstate travel. And it was the slayings of his CORE workers in Philadelphia, Miss., that inspired the film "Mississippi Burning."
Many times during the movement, Farmer came close to being lynched himself. He once had to be smuggled out of a Mississippi town in the back of a hearse.
"Few Americans have faced a more fearsome task or left a greater legacy of positive change," Clinton said of Farmer during a 1999 memorial service in Washington.
To reach Michael Zitz: 540/374-5408
Date published: 2/12/2005
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