"Daddy's family was poor. He told me that when he was in the first grade he would run home from school and sit on his mother's lap and suck at her breast. In that way food for one would feed two."

The grade school from which he made that daily trip home was in Pearson, Ga. According to his son, there was no high school for blacks. However Farmer was able to continue his education by acquiring a working scholarship from Mary McCloud Bethune to the Cookman Institute, the school she had founded in Daytona Beach, Fla.

A straight-A student, he was accepted into Boston University in Boston, Mass., and began his studies in 1909. He received four $100 scholarships to the university, according to Dr. Matthew Winfred Dogan, Wiley College president from 1896 to 1942, writing for a book, The New Progress of a Race, in 1925.

"He walked to Boston," his son writes. There was no money for transportation and nothing to hitch a ride with except an occasional horse and wagon. (He slept) enroute in the barns of kind farmers.

While at Boston University, Farmer earned his Bachelors in 1913, his Bachelor of Sacred Theology in 1916 and his Ph.D. in 1918. Farmer Jr, said his father worked full time as a valet and carriage boy for a wealthy white woman, sending money home to support his impoverished parents.

Because Boston University required two years of residency to earn a Ph.D., Farmer, who had completed the course work and written his dissertation in a year, crossed the Charles River to Harvard University in 1917 to do graduate study. He was also ordained deacon, the first step toward being a Methodist minister, and married Pearl Marion Houston, whom he had met at Cookman Institute, the same year.

He was a candidate for a year's study abroad in 1918. He was to have gone to the University of Basel (Switzerland). But the United States' entrance into world War I made it impossible for him to travel, and he lost the opportunity. In 1919, he was ordained an elder in the Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and he remained a part of the Texas Conference until his death.

The title of his 300-page dissertation was, "The Origin and Development of the Messianic Hope in Israel with Special References to Analogous Beliefs among Other Peoples." A copy of the dissertation, with its authenticity attested to by Farmer Sr. himself, is available at Boston University. According to the fall, 1930, issue of The Foundation the publication of Gammon Theological Seminary, following Farmer's graduation, he joined the Texas Conference and was assigned by Methodist bishops to churches in Texarkana, Texas, where his first child-daughter Helen Louise - was born in 1918, to Galveston, then to Ebenezer in Marshall.

By 1919, he was assigned to Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. No Methodist Church records of that early assignment have been uncovered, although Dr. Dogan mentions it in 1925. Farmer Jr. was born in Marshall Jan. 12, 1920, but no birth certificate was on file in the Harrison County Clerk's office. Older women of Ebenezer (United) Methodist Church, where the Farmers had been members, and Farmer Sr. was the pastor, remembered his birth and attested to the fact in 1986, as did his Aunt Sadie Wilson, so Farmer was able to acquire an amended birth certificate, now on file in Harrison County.

At Wiley in 1920, Dr. Farmer taught economics, philosophy, religion, Greek and Hebrew. He also preached regularly at Wiley College. Elderly people in Marshall who had been students of Farmer agreed with his son's description of the learned professor. "Students benefited from his extracurricular assistance, too. Several septuagenarians who had studied under dad tell me they would go to him with problems in physics or analytical geometry or calculus. (They thought he knew everything.) He would sit at his desk chair, feet crossed at the ankles, picking hairs from his prematurely balding head, as he always did when deep in thought. Moments later, with a flourish, he would write the correct answer and his method of arriving at it."

But at this time and years later when Dr. Farmer returned to Wiley in 1934, whites were equally impressed with his mind and preaching eloquence - remarkable for a small, prejudiced Southern town. One of them was the late Inez Hughes, who taught English in Marshall Schools from the 1920's until 1964 and married East Texas Baptist College religion professor Solon Hughes in the 1930's. Mrs. Hughes met Farmer Jr. for the first time on June 11, 1986, when he was in Marshall to speak and to autograph his book.

She told him, "I know people think you're a great man, but in my opinion, your father was greater. Solon and I used to go out to Wiley College every Sunday afternoon to hear his sermonettes."

"He was a great intellectual," Farmer Jr. replied. "He was the most intellectual man I ever met," Mrs. Hughes said. "If times had been different, I think Solon and he would have been great friends."

The most contemporary accounts of Farmer's career the author has been able to locate are the 1925 book, Progress of a Race, and the much more extensive biographical account in Gammon Theological Seminary's The Foundation, written in 1930. The theological seminary in Atlanta conferred an honorary Doctor of Divinity on the scholar in 1929, and Farmer taught there from 1930 to 1933. The Foundation article said Farmer entered the Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1917. He left Wiley College to become the dean at Rust College in Holly Springs, Miss., at the end of the school year in 1920. He remained there until 1925 when he was hired away to Samuel Huston College.

The 1930 Foundation describes Farmer's important efforts at Samuel Huston College, which "was preparing to make its final effort for state recognition as a senior college." "This year (1925) President Brooks secured his service as a professor of social sciences in which capacity he has served until the present. In 1928 he was elected registrar, and in 1930 registrar and acting dean of the college .... When he took over the (Samuel Huston) registrar's office in 1928 he found it in such a condition as greatly embarrassed and endangered the standing of the college with the state.

But, as a result of his self-sacrificing industry, the state inspector declared last winter that the condition of the registrar's office has improved 700 percent, that the records would be a credit to any institution, and they placed Samuel Huston College in the front rank of educational institutions in the state.

"Another member of the State Board of Examiners later commended his service by saying, 'You're doing pioneer work.' and during a visit last spring the Educational Director of the Institutions of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Negroes declared that Dr. Farmer has been 'the savior of Samuel Huston this year.'"

According to the same source, Farmer was a prolific writer, "having contributed numerous articles on sociological subjects to newspapers and magazines and having written the Sunday School Lessons for the Southwestern Christian Advocate for 11 years (1919-1929). Dogan wrote that Farmer was the editor of the Sunday School department of the Southwestern Christian Advocate.

"My daddy used to write all the time," said Jim Farmer in an interview in April 1996. "He would hide himself in his study and type with two fingers - both index fingers - with his legs crossed at the ankles."

Sometime before 1932 he became the dean and principal teacher of the Gulfside School of Ministerial Training near Gulfport, Miss. This institution, established in 1920 by Methodist Episcopal Bishop Robert E. Jones, trained black ministers who were either seeking continuing education, or who could not attend seminary on a full-time basis. He returned every summer until he retired in 1956.

Farmer returned to Wiley College in 1933. He again served as professor of religion, philosophy and psychology and once again enthralled both white and black audiences with his Sunday afternoon preaching at the Wiley College Chapel. He also wrote articles for the college publication Wiley Reporter and probably continued to write for publication in other learned journals. Unfortunately, to date none of it has been uncovered.

In 1939, Farmer left Texas for Howard University in Washington D.C. There he became the second Ph. D on the faculty of the School of Religion. The other was Dean of the School of Religion Benjamin E. Mays (Ph.D. 1935-University of Chicago.) He was an Old Testament scholar, his son said, but he was hired to teach New Testament.

During this time a wealth of his writing and copies of his lectures appear, possibly because copies were retained at Howard University. In 1943 he wrote, The Coming of Peace and the Prince of Peace. He also wrote The Rediscovery of Deutro-Isaiah, possibly based on his doctoral dissertation, but no known copies have been found. In 1939, he also contributed sermons to a book called Pulpit Eloquence, but it seems to be lost as well.

While at Howard University, he wrote regularly for the A.M.E. Zion Quarterly Review. Copies of articles from 1943 to 1945 are available at Howard. Titles of Farmer's articles and printed sermons include: "Was Jesus Violent in Cleansing the Temple," and "Idealistic Christians in a Realistic World."

He lectured at Fisk University at the 17th Annual Session of the Interdenominational Institute May 22-24, 1944. His four lectures, which were later published, were titled; "St. Paul's Gospel of Salvation in the Epistle to the Romans."

Farmer returned to Austin, Texas, to Huston-Tillotson in 1946, where he was again registrar and professor of philosophy. He was also chairman of the social science division.

In 1956, he retired from teaching and returned to Washington, D.C. There he reviewed books on theology for the Journal of Religious Thought, a publication of the Howard University School of Religion. His reviews can be found in 1953, 1956 and 1958 publications.

Jim Farmer's description of his father's death in 1961 is most dramatic. Farmer Jr, whose CORE organization was making headlines as thirteen CORE and SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) members departed from Washington, D.C. headed for New Orleans on two buses. The Freedom rides had begun and Farmer was on one of the buses. His father lay in a bed in Freedman's Hospital in Washington D.C., dying from the complications of cancer and diabetes. The younger Farmer had left a copy of his itinerary with his father. On the night of May 14, the day before the Freedom Riders, with Farmer on the Trailways bus, were to enter Alabama, he got a call that his father had died, and he left the ride to return to Washington.

"Mother emphatically stated that daddy had willed the timing of his death, which he knew to be inevitable, in order to bring me back before the trip through Alabama," Farmer wrote in Lay Bare the Heart. "Each day he would unfold the itinerary and squint at it, saying, `Well let me see where Junior is today.'

"Mother said he nodded with satisfaction until the fatal day and hung tenaciously to life and consciousness. When the itinerary told him the next day I would head into Alabama, he said, `Oh!' Then he released his grip on life, she said, and slipped away. She believed until her death that dad had consciously done that in an effort to save me."

The Greyhound bus was burned outside Anniston, and several of the riders suffered smoke inhalation and other injuries and were hospitalized. The Trailways bus, Freedom Riders already beaten badly at the Alabama state line, made it to Birmingham. There, with Police Chief Bull Conner's approval, the police allowed a mob to have its way with the Freedom Riders for several minutes before intervening. One man was left for dead, another suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Farmer would probably have been killed had he been on the bus.

James Leonard Farmer, Sr., was buried two days later in Washington, D.C. So the question becomes, why a Texas Historical Marker for a man born in South Carolina and who is buried in Washington, D.C. And most particularly why should it be placed in Marshall, Texas?

There are three compelling reasons. The one town where both J. Leonard Farmer, Sr. and his son James Farmer, Jr. have not been forgotten is Marshall, Texas. This marker would be placed on the Wiley College campus, near James Farmer Street, renamed to honor and remember both men in 1995. Dr. Farmer's teaching career began at Wiley College, which at the time of his arrival in 1919 was the only black college in Texas among seven black colleges the Southern Association graded "Class A."

Dr. Farmer left his large library of books and papers to Wiley, much to the distress of his son. "I wrote dad once and asked him if I could have his library," Jim Farmer said in an interview June 17, 1986, in Marshall. "He told me it was too late, he had already donated it to Wiley College. Later he sent me the Encyclopedia Britannica. It was a poor substitute for the library. Daddy made notes in the margins of all his books. What I wanted was that annotated library."

Wiley College built a new library in the mid 1960's, and the books apparently disappeared at that time. No book belonging to Dr. Farmer, nor any of his papers, can be found in the new library.

The third reason to place it here is that it is the birthplace of his son, who also made history during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950's. Farmer, Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Whitney Young of the National Urban League were considered the "Big Four" Civil Rights leaders.

Jim Farmer calls himself a Texan, and returns to Marshall often. Farmer Jr.'s personal papers are now located at the Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin. Honor for his father is long overdue.