The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is a civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1942 by a group of pacifists who were members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The organization's first executive director was James Farmer, Jr., who served from 1942 to 1966.
CORE used nonviolent direct action to challenge racial discrimination. One of its most significant campaigns was the Freedom Rides of 1961, in which CORE activists rode interstate buses into the segregated South to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which had declared segregated public transportation to be unconstitutional. The Freedom Rides were met with violence from white mobs, but they also helped to mobilize public support for the civil rights movement.