James S. Farmer; Was Top Civil Rights Leader

James S. Farmer, the last surviving member of the so-called Big Four civil rights giants of the 1950s and 1960s, died Friday in Virginia after years of illness. He was 79.

The son of a preacher raised in Mississippi, Farmer helped found the Congress of Racial Equality in the early 1940s. He was considered one of the pillars of the early civil rights movement, along with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and Urban League head Whitney Young.

“James Farmer helped to make America a better nation,” President Clinton said in a statement Friday.

Clinton last year presented Farmer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Farmer had been hospitalized at the time of his death, said a spokesman at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, where Farmer was a professor. No other details were immediately available.

For several years, Farmer had battled the complications of diabetes, including blindness and leg amputations. Last year, he underwent brain surgery to remove a blood clot.

Farmer was perhaps best known as a leader of the historic, CORE-sponsored Freedom Rides of the 1960s, which sought to integrate bus systems across the South.

Though he was a pacifist, inspired by the ideals of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Farmer encountered repeated violence in his campaigns against segregation. He was frequently threatened, and once escaped a Louisiana mob by hiding in a hearse.

Three of the Freedom Riders he recruited, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi in 1964. The 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning” is based on the slayings.

‘Obscene Laws and Unfair Customs’

The violence directed at the Freedom Riders ignited public outrage and built political momentum to finally end the legalized segregation of black and white citizens across the South.

“He was an authentic activist willing to challenge obscene laws and unfair customs through nonviolent direct action,” said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“He challenged injustice at its root,” Lowery said. “He was willing to take to the streets and stimulate and precipitate. He was a catalyst.”

In interviews in recent years, and in his 1985 autobiography, Farmer was candid about his fears during the height of the civil rights battle.

“Anyone who said he wasn’t afraid during the civil rights movement was either a liar or without imagination,” he said in 1991. “I think we were all scared. I was scared all the time. My hands didn’t shake but inside I was shaking.”

Born in Texas, Farmer was 14 when he entered Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, as a freshman on a full scholarship.

He later visited the White House with a group of students, where he respectfully engaged President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in debate.

He graduated from theological school at Howard University in 1941, and was a conscientious objector during World War II.

It was during his college years that he began to agonize over segregation.

In May 1942, Farmer took part in what he described as the “first organized civil rights sit-in in American history” at a “whites-only” coffeehouse in Chicago. The nonviolent demonstration forced the owners to change their policies and serve nonwhite customers.

Division within CORE over leadership and direction led Farmer to resign in 1966, and he settled into a quieter life. He taught at Lincoln University and New York University.

He surprised some civil rights activists in 1969 by joining the Nixon administration as an assistant secretary in the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare. His presence helped persuade the administration to approve Head Start funds for Southern states.

Farmer moved to the Fredericksburg area in 1980 to teach and write his autobiography, “Lay Bare the Heart.” The book charted his involvement in the integration struggle, and also his personal trials about gradually going blind.

He continued to teach regularly despite his infirmities and was revered on the Mary Washington campus as a living history of the nation’s civil rights era.

Farmer took particular pride last year in receiving the Medal of Freedom, saying he had begun to feel ignored and forgotten.

“It’s a high honor, and I’m grateful it came before I died,” Farmer said then. “It’s a vindication.”

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Times wire services contributed to this report.