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Fund for an OPEN Society |
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because separate can never be equal. |
OPEN’s History |
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Contact Us
Email: open@opensoc.org NJ Office: 973.821.4198 PA Office: 215.546.0511 |
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Fund for an OPEN Society was founded in 1975 by James Farmer and Morris Milgram, two leaders in America's civil rights movement. At first, OPEN provided below market-rate mortgages to people moving to neighborhoods where their race was underrepresented - hence the name "Fund". More recently, OPEN has focused its efforts on working with communities seeking to become stably integrated. James Farmer (1920-1999), co-founder of OPEN, grew up in the racially segregated world of Jim Crow Mississippi. A peace activist during the 1930s and 1940s, Farmer helped introduce Americans to the teachings of Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi and pioneered the use of Gandhian nonviolent direct action in the fight against racial inequality. When asked what he planned to do after receiving his divinity degree from Howard University in 1941, Farmer succinctly replied: "Destroy segregation." Farmer joined A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement to struggle for racial equality during World War II. In 1942, Farmer helped to found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and led sit-ins against segregated restaurants in Chicago and many other northern cities during World War II. A tireless organizer, Farmer worked with civil rights and labor groups; advised the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.; and joined the 1961 Freedom Rides against segregated transportation in the South. As national director of CORE in the 1960s, Farmer engaged in a multi-front battle for racial equality. He participated in dozens of grassroots protests around the country, developed literacy and education programs, and worked with the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations on civil rights reforms. In 1975, Farmer and Morris Milgram founded the Fund for an OPEN Society, where he continued his long-term commitment to create an interracial America. In 1985, Farmer published Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement. Morris Milgram (1916-1997), co-founder of OPEN, was a lifelong crusader for social justice. As a student at the City College of New York during the Great Depression, Milgram led campus protests against fascism. During World War II, Milgram worked with labor and civil rights organizations to promote racial equality on the home front and forged a lifetime friendship with James Farmer, one of the founders of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In 1947, Milgram joined his father-in-law's construction firm with the hopes of building interracial communities throughout America. In the 1954, with the assistance of Quaker investors, he built one of the nation's earliest and most successful racially-mixed communities, Concord Park, just outside Philadelphia. Milgram built other developments in the late 1950s and early 1960s in places such as northeast Philadelphia, Princeton, New Jersey, and Hockessin, Delaware. In the 1960s, Milgram turned his attention toward providing much-needed racially-integrated apartment housing, particularly in the nation’s capitol. At a time when the vast majority of Americans lived in racially segregated neighborhoods, Milgram's communities provided a compelling alternative vision of interracial cooperation. In 1975, Milgram and Farmer co-founded the Fund for an OPEN Society, which continues today as the nation's only nonprofit promoting inclusive communities. He wrote dozens of articles and, in 1977, published Good Neighborhood: The Challenge of Open Housing.
Restrictive Convenants | Redlining | The Price of Segregation |
