James Forman (October 4, 1928 — January 10, 2005) was an American Civil Rights leader active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, and the International Black Workers Congress. He was also the author of several notable books.
Contents |
Activism within the SNCC
In 1961, Forman joined and became the executive secretary of the then newly formed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 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], let's knock the fucking legs off!" [2]
Post-SNCC work
After being replaced by Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson 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]
On May 30, 1969 Forman made plans to pursue a similar course at a Jewish Synagogue, Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York. Members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, showed up carrying chains and clubs promising to confront Forman if he attempted to enter the synagogue. Kahane and the JDL forewarned Forman and the public about their intended actions and Forman never showed up at the Synagogue. [1]
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]
Family
Forman's marriages to Mary Forman and Mildred Thompson 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.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Forman lived with Constancia ("Dinky") Romilly, the second and only surviving child of the British-born journalist, anti-fascist activist and aristocrat, the Hon. Jessica Mitford, and her first husband, Esmond Romilly, who was a nephew-by-marriage of Sir Winston Churchill. Though obituaries and other posthumous articles about Forman have stated that he and Romilly were married, correspondence between Romilly's mother and aunts state that the couple were not legally husband and wife.[5]
Forman and Romilly (who later became an emergency-room nurse and married, in 1980, schoolteacher Edwin "Terry" Weber) had two sons:
- James Robert Lumumba Forman (born 1967 and uses the name James Forman Jr. to differentiate him from his father), a professor at Georgetown Law School[5][6]
- Chaka Esmond Fanon Forman (born 1970), an actor
Atheism
In one of his books "The Making Of Black Revolutionaries" Foreman devoted an entire chapter to explaining his disbelief in God and his distaste for "religious crap".[6][7] He also received the African American Humanist Award in 1994.
References
- ^ a b c d e f [1], Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007.
- ^ [2], American Experience: Eyes on the Prize transcript (PBS). Accessed 15 March 2007.
- ^ [3], Forman Embodied a Range of Struggle. Accessed 15 March 2007.
- ^ [4], Democracy Now. Accessed 15 March 2007.
- ^ According to a 13 March 1967 letter written at the time of the birth of the couple's first child by Constancia's aunt Deborah, the Duchess of Devonshire, to her sister Nancy Mitford, Romilly and Forman remained unwed "because she is white & would be a handicap to him in his political career (he is the right-hand man of one of the leading Negro politicians from the South) & I suppose that is rather insulting ..." Shortly afterward, Romilly's mother wrote to Nancy Mitford on 6 April 1967, "I don't quite fathom why she doesn't get married (as the babe's father, Jim Foreman [sic], and her have been living together for ages); but she seems happy with her rum lot, so that's a comfort." The full text of the letters and other correspondence regarding Forman and Romilly's relationship and the births of their children appear in the following volume: Charlotte Mosley, editor, "The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters", London: Fourth Estate, 2007, pp. 485-486 and 488.
- ^ "James Foreman". www.celebatheists.com/wiki/.
- ^ "James Foreman". www.philosopedia.org.
94, Open Hand Publishing Inc., Seattle, (ISBN 0-940880-42-3)
External links
- Washington Post Obituary
- Spartacus
- Stanford University
- James Forman's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
- "Letters on the Arab-Israeli Dispute in James Forman's The Making of Black Revolutionaries"