James Forman was born on October 4, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois. He spent his early childhood living with his grandmother in Marshall County, Mississippi before returning to Chicago to start school. He graduated from high school in 1947, then served in the United States Air Force before enrolling at the University of Southern California in 1952. After suffering a beating and arrest by police during his second semester at USC, Forman transferred to Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he became a leader in student politics and headed the university’s delegation to a conference of the National Student Association in 1956. Forman received his BA in 1957 and moved on to attend graduate school at Boston University.

In extension of his leadership in student politics, in the late 1950s Forman became more involved in the civil rights movement in the American South through his work with the Chicago Defender, a prominent Black newspaper. In 1961, became the executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), holding that position until 1966. He helped lead the organization through the March on Washington and the Freedom Summer, and encouraged staff and members to consider Marxism and Black Nationalism. Forman joined with other black militants, including the Black Panther Party (BPP), in calling for greater alliances between black and white radicals, and briefly became the BPP’s minister of foreign affairs in 1968. Later in 1968, Forman also joined forces with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and in April 1969 he and other League members took control of the National Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit. Forman read a "Black Manifesto" that demanded that white churches and synagogues pay half a billion dollars to Blacks as reparations for previous exploitation. A month later he interrupted a service at New York’s Riverside Church to read the manifesto again

A prolific writer, Forman founded the Black America News Service and published numerous articles, pamphlets and books on the civil rights movement and Black revolutionary theory, including Sammy Younge, Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement (1968), and his autobiography, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (1972). He received a master’s degree in African and Afro-American History from Cornell University (1980) and a PhD from the Union of Experimental Colleges and Universities (1982). In 1981, he published his thesis, "An Examination of the Question of Self-Determination and Its Application for the African American People," in which he advocated an autonomous Black nation in the Black Belt region of the United States. Forman spent the rest of his adult life continuing to organize Black and disenfranchised people around issues of progressive economic and social development. He also taught at American University in Washington, D.C.

Forman was married twice, to Mary Sears Forman (1950-1956) and Mildred Thompson Page (1959-1965), and had a long-term relationship with Constancia "Dinky" Romilly in the 1960s and 1970s. Forman and Romilly had two sons: Chaka Forman and James Forman, Jr.

James Forman died of colon cancer on January 10, 2005 at the age of 76.

Sources:

Dalrymple, Helen, and Gail Fineberg, “James Forman, Activist: Children Donate Civil Rights Leader’s Papers,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin, March 2008. https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0803/forman.html

Goodman, Amy, “James Forman 1928-2005: Civil Rights Pioneer Dies At 76,” Democracy Now! January 12, 2005. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304152909/http://www.democracynow.org/2005/1/12/james_forman_1928_2005_civil_rights

“Forman, James,” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, accessed May 7, 2025. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/forman-james.

James Forman papers, 1848-2005, MSS85371, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms010125.

“James Forman,” SNCC Digital Gateway, accessed May 7, 2025. https://snccdigital.org/people/james-forman.

Martin, Douglas, “James Forman Dies at 76; Was Pioneer in Civil Rights,” The New York Times, January 12, 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/obituaries/james-forman-dies-at-76-was-pioneer-in-civil-rights.htm