Anyone who said he wasn't afraid during the civil rights movement was either a liar or without imagination. I was scared all the time. My hands didn't shake but inside I was shaking.

Sadly his mother had to inform him that the reason the other boy could buy the Coke was because the other boy was white and Farmer was colored. Farmer earned a Bachelor of Science at Wiley College in 1938 and a Bachelor of Divinity from Howard University School of Religion in 1941. They also named a program after him that encouraged minority students to enroll and enter college.

He was the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride which eventually led to the desegregation of inter-state transportation in the United States. He was an honorary vice chairman in the Democratic Socialists of America. In 1942 Farmer co-founded the Committee of Racial Equality which later became the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) an organization that sought to bring an end to racial segregation in the United States through nonviolence.