 used with permission of the
artist, Jeffrey Smith.
 Margaret Agnor, Chairman of the Harrison
County Historical Commission and James L. Farmer, Jr. unveil
the Texas State Historical Marker for Dr. J. Leonard Farmer
at ceremonies on the Wiley College campus March, 1998.
James Farmer, Jr. and his sister, Helen,
with their mother, Pearl Houston Farmer, taken at Rust
College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1923.
In 1995, city officials in Marshall, Texas named a street in memory of Dr. J. Leonard Farmer and in honor of his son. Pictured above are Mayor Audrey Kariel, left, as she presented James Farmer with a replica of the sign. |
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J. Leonard Farmer was one of only 25 African-Americans with a Ph.D. when he arrived at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas in 1919. There he began a teaching career that would span thirty-seven years, most of that time in Texas. Theologian and Old Testament scholar, he has been largely forgotten, as have most of the professors who taught in the nations many predominantely black colleges from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Dr. Farmer, the son of slaves, received his Ph.D. from Boston University (top) in 1918. He was born in North Carolina on June 12, 1886. After completing his high school work at Mary McLeod Bethune's Cookman Institute, he headed north -- on foot -- to Boston. In addition to Wiley College, where he taught from 1919 to 1920 (second from top) and again from 1936 to 1939, he also taught at Rust College (third from top) in Holly Springs, Miss., from 1920 to 1925, Samuel Huston College in Austin (now Huston-Tillitson) from 1925 to 1931, and again from 1946 to 1956, Gammon Theological Seminary from 1931 to 1933, and Howard University School of Theology from 1939 to 1946. Following retirement from Huston-Tillitson, Dr, Farmer returned to Washington, D. C. As his father lay dying of cancer, son James Leonard Farmer, Jr. founder and national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, was in the front of the bus as the Freedom Rides began, testing the law requiring the end of segregation for interstate bus travel. Dr. Farmer died on May 14, 1961, the day before the first Freedom Ride was to enter Alabama, and Farmer returned to Washington to bury his father. Dr. Farmer's death may have well saved the life of his son. All the Freedom Riders were brutally beaten or suffered from smoke inhalation and all were hospitalized the next day. Honor for both father and son is long overdue, but both are finally being recognized for the contributions they each have made. On January 15, 1998, James Farmer Jr. received the Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in White House Ceremonies (extreme bottom). On March 5, 1998, a Texas Historical Marker for Dr. Farmer was dedicated by his son on the Wiley College campus . In 1995, a Marshall street was named in honor of James Farmer, and in memory of his father (bottom). |
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