Lay Bare the Legacy
Mary Washington revels in its enduring link to late civil rights leader James Farmer
By Timothy M. O'Donnell, Charles S. Reed Jr. '11, Elizabeth H. Hudson '11, and Deirdre F. Engel '11
Inspired by the true story of the 1935 Wiley College debate team and its legendary professor and coach, Melvin B. Tolson, the major motion picture The Great Debaters captures a formative period in the life of one of Mary Washington’s most famous and beloved professors – Dr. James L. Farmer. For those with ties to the campus where the late civil rights leader taught for more than a decade, the film’s recent release adds significance to Mary Washington’s centennial year, inviting reflection on James Farmer’s lasting impact on this institution.
During the time he taught at Mary Washington from 1985 until 1998, Farmer’s classes were wildly popular, with students enrolling in record numbers. He was known for his good humor and humility, and his courses left an incredible – and indelible – impression on those who took them. Nearly a decade after his death in 1999, UMW students are still learning from Farmer. A class last semester provided an in-depth look at his enormous societal contributions and his eternal link to this school.
A Class Above
The fall semester course provided an extraordinary opportunity to consider Farmer’s legacy through the University’s new curricular program for freshmen, the First Year Seminar. Designed to introduce students to the excitement of university-level scholarship in a seminar experience, the program cultivates an appetite for liberal learning through in-depth study of chosen topics.
Scouring many published writings and speeches, including his acclaimed book, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement, students explored Farmer’s life and work, with the goal of preserving and promoting his legacy. But the curriculum also extended to the examination, preservation, and production of unpublished sources, including previously unexamined materials from the James Farmer Collection in the Simpson Library archives, video footage of Farmer’s campus lectures, and interviews with his colleagues and students.
Seminar participants read first-hand accounts from the 1930s of the Wiley College debate team’s victories. They studied Farmer’s famous 1942 memorandum outlining the case for using nonviolent tactics in the civil rights struggle and watched video footage of the Freedom Rides, reenacting portions of Farmer’s 1960s-era debates with Malcolm X. Subject matter even extended to Farmer’s efforts on behalf of Head Start, where he worked for a brief time during the Nixon Administration in 1970.
Despite the breadth of research and the best efforts to focus on many of the interesting and historically significant episodes of Farmer’s life, students kept returning to questions and issues that hit closer to home. How did Farmer end up teaching at Mary Washington? What were his classes like? And what was his lasting impact on the University and its people?
A Consequential Bus Trip
In spring of 1961, Farmer led 13 Congress of Racial Equality members on the famous Freedom Rides, a watershed in the history of the civil rights movement. To test the desegregation of public transportation in the South, they boarded a Greyhound bus en route from Washington, D.C., to Mississippi.
Another, more serendipitous bus ride two decades later would forever change the face of Mary Washington.
John Pearce, now director of Fredericksburg’s James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library, was making his regular commute from Fredericksburg to Washington in the 1980s when he noticed “a tall, African-American man with a wonderful voice” seated near him on the bus. Mistaking him for William Warfield, a famous singer and actor, Pearce approached and asked, “Are you William Warfield?” Chuckling, the man said, “No, I am James Farmer.”
Farmer, who, by then, had neither title nor office, was working on his memoirs from a farm he had purchased on Guinea Station Road in Spotsylvania County.
After Pearce overcame his understandable embarrassment, the two struck up the first of many conversations occasioned by their mutual commuter bus trips back and forth between Fredericksburg and the nation’s capital. As their friendship deepened, Pearce recalled, “Farmer did me the great honor of asking me to look over portions of the manuscript” that would become Lay Bare the Heart.
Sensing that Farmer was interested in continuing his teaching career – he had held previous teaching posts at New York University and Lincoln University – and that Mary Washington needed “more information on the history of civil rights,” Pearce approached Philip Hall, who was then dean of the College, and suggested they find a way to bring Farmer to campus. At the time, the state sponsored a program that funded a distinguished “other-race” scholar to serve as a visiting professor at an institution in the Commonwealth. The state readily agreed that Farmer would be an excellent fit for the program, and his tenure as the Commonwealth Visiting Professor of History began in the fall of 1985. When the program ended a year later, Mary Washington hired him as a faculty member in the Department of History and American Studies, where he taught until he retired in 1998.
History 200
“History 200: An Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement” rapidly became a staple in the school’s curriculum. As Dean Hall explained, “It was a class that needed no advertisement.” The syllabi and course materials, which are today preserved in the University’s archives, reveal a class that was dynamic, yet rigorous, and a teacher who, despite his fame, was accessible to students, even listing his home telephone number on the class syllabus.
Attendance was mandatory, and students were bound by a set of class rules that prohibited certain lectures from being recorded because of their content. Requirements for the course were simple: one four-page paper, which Farmer graded over several grueling weeks by listening as they were read aloud, since he was nearly blind at this point in his life, and a final comprehensive exam.
The centerpiece of the lecture course was Lay Bare the Heart, which was published just before Farmer began teaching at Mary Washington. Eventually, the reading list grew to include Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters, Howell Raines’ My Soul Is Rested, and Juan Williams’ Eyes on the Prize. Unfortunately, by the mid-1990s, copies of Farmer’s autobiography were so scarce that it was listed on the syllabus as required reading only “if you can find a copy,” or it was dropped altogether.
Farmer taught two sections of the course on two different weeknights. Although the size of the class was eventually restricted to accommodate the demands of his schedule and his health, annual enrollment grew to more than 500 students.
Twice a week, Farmer’s famous baritone voice would boom from his seat at the front of Monroe Hall 104, the largest lecture hall on campus, as he regaled students with stories and lessons gleaned from nearly four decades of personal experience at the forefront of the freedom struggle. Each week, he focused on a different topic, ranging from the roots and evolution of the civil rights movement to the origins of nonviolent protest. The lectures also involved Farmer’s synthesis of the successes and failures of the movement, as well as a contemporary perspective on the status of the relations between the races in America.
The Legend Lives On
In interviews that students from the fall 2007 first-year seminar class conducted with Mary Washington alumni who had taken Farmer’s courses, three comments invariably emerged. Farmer was humble. He was good humored. And he was a marvelous storyteller.
When they enrolled in the course, most students, by their own admission, knew little about the history of the civil rights struggle or even the turbulence of the 1960s. America’s race problem was for them a historical footnote of a forgotten past. Farmer changed that.
During his tenure, a generation of Mary Washington graduates emerged with a sophisticated understanding of the civil rights movement and an acute awareness of its unfinished work.
Although only anecdotal evidence exists, the impact of Farmer’s course was in many cases life-altering. The interviews revealed that a number of History 200 alumni still proudly display their signed copies of Lay Bare the Heart on their bookshelves. Also, former Farmer students point to the experience of that class as having a deep and abiding influence that continues to affect their personal and professional lives. (See “Farmer’s Lessons Last a Lifetime.”)
Today, a decade after Farmer taught his last class at Mary Washington, the civil rights leader’s name and image remain permanent fixtures on the Fredericksburg campus, including a bust in his honor on Campus Walk. However, what may be more enduring are the less tangible legacies of Farmer’s time at Mary Washington – the lessons his former students have learned, the choices they have made, and the stories they have passed on to others.
By some estimates, nearly two-thirds of several graduating classes completed Farmer’s course. Such an immense footprint has rarely been seen in the history of American public education and may not soon be repeated. Teaching at Mary Washington turned out to be the final, fitting chapter to Farmer’s extraordinary life – a life that lives on in the thousands of Mary Washington graduates scattered across the globe who were privileged to call him “Professor Farmer.”
Timothy M. O’Donnell is UMW’s director of debate and associate professor of speech communication. The co-authors were members of O’Donnell’s fall 2007 first-year seminar class.