In a 1962 debate with Malcolm X on the campus of Cornell University, the great debater and civil rights activist James Farmer Jr. made a strong case against segregation.

“The disease and the evils that we have pointed to in our American culture have grown out of segregation and its partner, prejudice,” he argued. “We are for integration, which is the repudiation of the evil of segregation. … We are working for the right of Negroes to enter all fields of activity in American life. To enter business if they choose, to enter the professions, to enter the sciences, to enter the arts, to enter the academic world. To be workers, to be laborers if they choose. Our objective is to have each individual accepted on the basis of his individual merit and not on the basis of his color. On the basis of what he is worth himself.”