Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

The University of Chicago FOR chapter would become the first CORE group, the
Chicago Committee of Racial Equality. Chicago CORE was committed to
interracialism and the Gandhian principle of Satyagraha (nonviolent direct ac-
tion) .' One ofCORE's pioneers, James Farmer, explained :
We . . .believed that truth alone, the transparent justice of our
demands, would convert the segregationists, once they agreed to
listen. That was why satyagraha as `the firmness engendered by
love' was so essential to our discipline .
Nonviolent direct action, activist confrontation without the use of violent force
and a commitment to peaceful means was the exclusive tactic of CORE. CORE's
Statement of Purpose read "CORE has one method . . . .interracial nonviolent direct
action ."' By December 1942, CORE grew from a campus-based "peace team" at
the University of Chicago to a small federation of local direct action groups
committed to nonviolence . In 1943, the federation officially named itself the
Congress of Racial Equality.
On January 10 and 11, 1957, another important player in the nonviolent
movement emerged in Atlanta, Georgia. The first meeting of the Southern Lead-
ership Conference (SLC) took place at the Ebenezer Baptist Church . This meeting
was organized by Northern supporters of the Black freedom movement in the
South, including Northern activists Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and attorney
Stanley Levison . The purpose of this meeting was to create a regional organiza-
tion of local church-based desegregation movements which had emerged in
several Southern urban centers . The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged