| Summary: | Activist James Forman was born on October 4, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois but spent much of his childhood with his grandmother on a farm in Marshall County, Mississippi. He graduated from Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois in 1957. During the late 1950s, Forman became involved in the civil rights movement, and in 1960, he joined the Congress of Racial Equality, providing relief services to sharecroppers in Tennessee who had been evicted for registering to vote. That same year, he met several of the Freedom Riders, who asked Forman to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He served as SNCC's executive secretary from 1964 to 1966, until he left SNCC in 1968 to assist in increasing the economic development opportunities for black communities. Remaining an activist, Forman served as president of the Unemployment and Poverty Action Committee. Forman passed away on January 10, 2005, at the age of 76.
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