Short Essay: The Congress of Racial Equality

The Congress of Racial Equality had a great idea, to liberate African Americans during the times of heavy segregation in Chicago and eventually throughout the south. The main people involved in the Congress of Racial Equality were; Floyd McKissick, and Roy Innis, who wasn’t the most positive leader for the group.

The Congress of Racial Equality pioneered direct nonviolent action in the 1940s before playing a major part in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. CORE was founded by an interracial group of pacifists at the University of Chicago in 1942. The Chicago Chapter of CORE had success integrating races in several Chicago public accommodations and recreational areas, including the White City Roller Rink in 1946. It also mounted campaigns against the Chicago Board of Education to protest the installation of mobile classrooms as a solution for overcrowded African American schools and demand the full integration of public schools. The Chicago Chapter of CORE Archives at the Chicago Public Library, Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature contains the papers of Chicago CORE, its Southside chapter, Metropolitan CORE, and National CORE. 

They used nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation in Northern cities during the 1940s. Civil rights activists from other organizations used CORE’s nonviolent tactics during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but CORE did not establish a presence in the South until 1957. The next year CORE volunteers participated in Freedom Summer, a project that brought white Northerners to Mississippi to register black voters. With the help of local police, Ku Klux Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi killed three CORE volunteers at the beginning of the summer. The horror of Southern violence and the radicalization of other groups led many CORE members to move away from principles of nonviolence. In 1966 the CORE chose a new leader, Floyd McKissick. With McKissick leading the group they began to start short lived programs to end poverty. Two years later CORE removed whites from membership and chose Roy Innis as its national director. Roy was all for black leadership, but his misuse of the organization’s funds make the group fall. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, Innis became less active with the community. He moved CORE out of the mainstream of civil rights organizations, opposing busing and supporting welfare reform in other words he drove CORE in to the ground.

The CORE was significant to not only life for African Americans then but today as well. Most people believe that nonviolent actions against segregation came strictly from black-southern leaders much like well-known Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Contrary to those ideas CORE in a way paved the nonviolent approach for activism against segregation in the 40’s and 60’s. The unfortunate fall of the group set the movement back a bit, of course. However because the acts caught on it was easily continued leading to segregation being illegal today. In conclusion, to my short essay The Congress of Racial Equality was positive because it started the snowball effect for nonviolent actions to rebel against segregation in the 40’s and 60’s.