Rodenko describes the early work of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) as grassroots in nature. Although he is unable to explain explicitly why people did not seem ready for overt change in the mid-1940s, he does suggest that the concept of civil disobedience was still relatively novel at the time. In order to spread the word about their goals, CORE toured the South in the late 1940s, speaking primarily at black schools and colleges.