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The son of missionaries who spent portions of his early life in the Far East, George Houser served on the staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the 1940s and '50s. With James Farmer and Berniece Fisher, he co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 in Chicago. With Bayard Rustin, another FOR staffer, Houser, a white Methodist minister, co-led the Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride through the South in 1947, in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Irene Morgan vs. Virgina the previous Year.
Houser left the FOR in the 1950s and turned his attention to African liberation struggles. He led the American Committee on Africa for many years, spending decades on the continent promoting freedom from colonial rule.
References
"No One Can Stop the Rain," George Houser, 1989, The Pilgrim Press, forward by Julius Nyerere.
There is much discussion by Farmer and Houser on the founding of CORE in several issues of Fellowship magazine of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1992 (Spring, Summer and Winter issues) and a conference that year on CORE and the origins of the Civil Rights Movement at Bluffton College in Bluffton, Ohio, attended by both Houser and Farmer. Academics and the participants themselves agreed the founders of CORE were Jim Farmer, George Houser and Berniece Fisher. The conference has been preserved on videotape.
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