James Forman

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.

=Early Life & Education=African American topics sidebar|rightForman 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. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html] , Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007. ]

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. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html] , Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007. ]

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. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html] , Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007. ]

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!" [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_106.html] , American Experience: Eyes on the Prize transcript (PBS). Accessed 15 March 2007.]

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. [http://www.nyage.net/forman_embodied_a_range_of_str.HTM] , Forman Embodied a Range of Struggle. Accessed 15 March 2007.] 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. [http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/12/155243] , Democracy Now. Accessed 15 March 2007.]

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. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html] , Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007.]

On May 30, 1969 Forman made plans to puruse a similar course at a Jewish Synagogue, Temple Emanu-El in New York City. Members of the militant 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. [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,840170,00.html] , Time Magazine, Accessed 10 March 2008.]

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. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html] , Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007. ]

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). [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html] , Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007. ]

He died on January 10, 2005 of colon cancer, aged 76, at the Washington House, a hospice in Washington, DC. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html] , Washington Post Obituary. Accessed 15 March 2007. ]

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 a British-born journalist and anti-fascist activist, the Hon. Jessica Mitford, and her first husband and second cousin, Esmond Romilly, who was a nephew-by-marriage of Winston Churchill (Although Jessica had four children in all). 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. [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.]

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), an associate professor at Georgetown Law School [http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/facinfo/tab_faculty.cfm?Status=Faculty&ID=1923] [http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/forman/]
*Chaka Esmond Fanon Forman (born 1970), an actor

References

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)

External links

* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1621-2005Jan11.html Washington Post Obituary]
* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAforman.htm Spartacus]
* [http://www.stanford.edu/~ccarson/articles/left_2.htm Stanford University]
* [http://www.visionaryproject.com/formanjames James Forman's oral history video excerpts] at The National Visionary Leadership Project
* [http://www.psreview.org/content/view/29/72/ "Letters on the Arab-Israeli Dispute in James Forman's The Making of Black Revolutionaries"]