James Forman

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James Forman (October 4, 1928 - January 10, 2005) was an African-American Civil Rights leader active in both the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party.

Contents

[edit] As Executive Secretary of the SNCC

Forman spent his youth growing up mostly in Chicago and spending summers with family in Mississippi. After finishing high school, he served in the Air Force in Okinawa during the Korean War. [1]

Discharged from the Air Force in 1952, he enrolled at the University of Southern California before an incident of police brutality involving two Los Angeles Police Department officers led to an emotional breakdown. He returned to Chicago and ultimately finished his undergraduate studies at Roosevelt University graduating in 1957. Forman spent most of the late 1950s and early 1960s working as a graduate student, journalist and teacher before joining and becoming the executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1961. From 1961 to 1965 Forman, a decade older and more experienced than most of the other members of SNCC, became responsible for providing organizational support to the young, loosely affiliated activists by paying bills, radically expanding the institutional staff and planning the logistics for programs. Under the leadership of Forman and others SNCC became an important political player at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. [1]

In 1964, Forman, expressing his frustration with the gradualist approach of some Civil Rights leaders, made one of his best known quips: "If we can't sit at the table of democracy, we'll knock the fuckin' legs off!" [2]

[edit] Post-SNCC work

Even after stepping down as executive secretary, Forman remained close to the leadership of SNCC helping to negotiate the ill-fated "merger" of SNCC and the Black Panther Party in 1967 and even briefly taking a leadership position within the Panthers. [3] In 1969, after the failure of the merger and the decline of SNCC as an effective political organization, Forman began associating with other Black political radical groups. In Detroit he participated in the Black Economic Development Conference, where his "Black Manifesto" was adopted. He also founded a nonprofit organization called the Unemployment and Poverty Action Committee. [4]

As a part of his Black Manifesto, on a Sunday morning in May, 1969, Forman interrupted services at New York City's Riverside Church to demand $500 million in reparations from white churches to make up for injustices African Americans had suffered over the centuries. Although Riverside's preaching minister, the Rev. Ernest T. Campbell, termed the demands "exorbitant and fanciful," he was in sympathy with the impulse, if not the tactic. Later, the church agreed to donate a fixed percentage of its annual income to anti-poverty efforts.[1]

[edit] Later Life

During the 1970s and 1980s, Forman completed graduate work at Cornell University in African and African-American Studies and in 1982, he received a Ph.D. from the Union of Experimental Colleges and Universities, in cooperation with the Institute for Policy Studies.[1]

James Forman spent the rest of his adult life organizing Black and disenfranchised people around issues of progressive economic and social development and equality. He also taught at American University in Washington, DC. He wrote several books documenting his experiences within the movement and his evolving political philosophy including "Sammy Younge Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement" (1969), "The Making of Black Revolutionaries" (1972 and 1997) and "Self Determination: An Examination of the Question and Its Application to the African American People" (1984).[1]

He died on January 10, 2005 of colon cancer, aged 76, at the Washington House, a hospice in Washington, DC.[1]

[edit] Family

He married and divorced Constancia ("Dinky") Romilly, daughter of formidable muckraking journalist and anti-fascist activist Jessica Mitford. The couple had two sons, James Robert Lumumba Forman, Jr., now an associate professor at Georgetown Law School, and Chaka Esmond Fanon Forman, an actor in Los Angeles.

His two other marriages to Mary Forman and Mildred Thompson also ended in divorce. He was married to Mildred Thompson Forman (now Mildred Page) from 1959 to 1965, during the most active period of SNCC. Mildred Forman moved to Atlanta with James and worked at the Atlanta SNCC office as well as working as coordinator for tours of the SNCC Freedom Singers.


[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f [1], Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007.
  2. ^ [2], American Experience: Eyes on the Prize transcript (PBS). Accessed 15 March 2007.
  3. ^ [3], Forman Embodied a Range of Struggle. Accessed 15 March 2007.
  4. ^ [4], Democracy Now. Accessed 15 March 2007.

[edit] Publications

  • Sammy Younge Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement, 1968, Grove Press, New York, (ISBN 0-940880-13-X)
  • The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 1985 and 1997, Open Hand Publishing, Washington D.C. (ISBN 0-295-97659-4) and (ISBN 0-940880-10-5)
  • Self Determination: An Examination of the Question and Its Application to the African American People, 1980, Thesis, later published by Open Hand Publishing, Washington D.C. (ISBN 0-940880-09-1)
  • High Tide of Black Resistance, 1994, Open Hand Publishing Inc., Seattle, (ISBN 0-940880-42-3)

[edit] External links


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