FAMILY LIFE
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
RELIGION AT HOME
James Farmer, Jr. was born on January 12, 1920 in Marshall, Texas to a family who valued both education and religion. It was due to this high value system that Farmer skipped many grades in elementary school and began college at the age of 14. His family was an important part of his life instilling their values into him. Farmer’s mother thought it important to shelter her children from the injustices of the world, preventing Farmer from truly experiencing segregation until he was around five years of age.
Farmer’s parents had many ideas of what he should become. His father was the first African-American to receive a Ph. D. in the state of Texas, and expected his son to overcome the boundaries of his race using education. James Farmer Senior pushed his son to not only achieve greatness through education, but also through the word of God. It is because of this that Farmer learned how to speak in a passionate way that would soon sway many around him into action.
Farmer’s father, James Farmer Sr, was a very religious man. He was both an educator, and a minister at the schools that Farmer went to. A man of meager means, Farmer Sr ruled his house with a strict and fair hand that his son would later inherit and a view of the world that his son would use to look at the injustices around him.
“We all grow up with the a of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.”
--Shirley Abbott