Organized in September of 1948, the Greater Boston Committee of Racial Equality had a membership of sixty by the April 1949 date of its affiliation with the national Congress of Racial Equality. Local chapters of CORE are self-governing and develop autonomous programs within the philosophic outline of the national organization. Boston CORE, with standing committees on education, action, survey, newsletter, and the executive, concentrated on investigating the policies of hotels toward Negroes, and a fund-raising campaign for CORE-HOUSE, a proposed interracial cooperative house that never materialized. Activity lagged during 1951 and the Committee ceased to function. An effort initiated in the summer of 1958 to reorganize the Boston chapter of CORE was realized by November of that year. The nucleus of less than twenty active members established a steering committee and an action committee, and in 1959 the group again affiliated with the national organization. During this early period, and until 1961, the formal organization of national CORE was itself in a state of flux. Until national director James Farmer was succeeded by Floyd Bixler McKissick (national chairman from 1963) CORE followed its stated policy as a national federation of local interracial groups working to abolish racial discrimination by direct, nonviolent methods. But in July of 1966 CORE articulated a philosophy of Black Power and self-defense rather than nonviolence, which was reflected in the positions of policy taken by most local chapters.
