In 1942, James Farmer invited other blacks to sit with him in a Chicago doughnut shop that refused to serve blacks. It was the first nonviolent protest in America's modern civil rights movement. Years later, Martin Luther King Jr. became famous for the same kind of "sit-in." In 1961, Farmer led blacks to take seats on Southern buses even though they weren't welcome. The "Freedom Rides" became famous. Farmer did not.
"I certainly was ignored and forgotten," he said. Not anymore. Last week he was one of 15 Americans to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest nonmilitary award.