James Forman

1928 Chicago, Illinois - 2005 Washington, D.C.

BiographyJames Forman spent his early childhood living with his grandmother in Marshall County, Mississippi until the age of six. He served in Air Force for a time before enrolling at the University of Southern California in 1952. Forman began his activism after becoming a leader in student politics at the Roosevelt University in Chicago where he transferred after his second year in school. In 1958 he covered the Little Rock desegregation crisis for the Chicago Defender and in the coming years would go on to participate in voting rights organizing and freedom rides. In 1960 he agreed to become the secretary of the SNCC. Forman frequently criticized and clashed with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent style of activism. In 1964 he went to the nation of Guinea and upon his return became interested in Marxism and Black Nationalism, eventually joining the Black Panther Party. In 1968 he joined the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and resigned from the SNCC. He would go on to write many books and papers on the civil Rights movement and Black Revolutionary Theory throughout his life.

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