Created in 1942, CORE evolved from the Quaker-inspired Fellowship of Reconciliation (1914), a catalyst of the Peace Movement. It advocated racial integration and nonviolent protest against Jim Crow. It launched “sit down” protests at segregated restaurants during World War II and a 1947 bus journey to test states’ compliance with the Supreme Court decision barring segregation on interstate buses.

In the wake of the 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins, CORE achieved national visibility. Its Freedom Rides (1961) greatly expanded student membership. Partnering with the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project, it registered black voters. Its Freedom Highways and Open Cities projects promoted desegregation of public accommodations and employment in North Carolina and Virginia. During Freedom Summer in Mississippi, two of the three murdered civil rights workers were CORE staffers. Racist violence, inadequate federal protection, and CORE's weakening commitment to nonviolence foreshadowed its turn to Black Power in 1966.