The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans. From 1962, with the support of the Voter Education Project, SNCC committed to the registration and mobilization of black voters in the Deep South. Affiliates such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama also worked to increase the pressure on federal and state government to enforce constitutional protections.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), also referred to simply as the Freedom Democratic Party, was an American political party that existed in the state of Mississippi from 1964 to 1968, during the Civil Rights Movement. Created as the partisan political branch of the Freedom Democratic organization, the party was organized by African Americans and White Americans sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement from Mississippi to challenge the established power of the state Mississippi Democratic Party, which at the time opposed the Civil Rights Movement and allowed participation only by Whites, despite the fact that African Americans made up 40% of the state population.
Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. Blacks had been restricted from voting since the turn of the century due to barriers to voter registration and other laws. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers such as libraries, in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local Black population.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement.
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting and women's rights activist, community organizer, and a leader in the civil rights movement. She was the vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Hamer also organized Mississippi's Freedom Summer along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was also a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, an organization created to recruit, train, and support women of all races who wish to seek election to government office.
Robert Parris Moses was an American educator and civil rights activist known for his work as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on voter education and registration in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, and his co-founding of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. As part of his work with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations, he was the main organizer for the Freedom Summer Project.
Annie Bell Robinson Devine (1912–2000) was an American activist in the Civil Rights Movement.
Aaron Henry was an American civil rights leader, politician, and head of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP. He was one of the founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which tried to seat their delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
Victoria Jackson Gray Adams was an American civil rights activist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She was one of the founding members of the influential Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was a coalition of the major Civil Rights Movement organizations operating in Mississippi. COFO was formed in 1961 to coordinate and unite voter registration and other civil rights activities in the state and oversee the distribution of funds from the Voter Education Project. It was instrumental in forming the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. COFO member organizations included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer Sr. was an American civil rights movement leader and president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for his work on recruiting Black Americans to vote.
Hollis Watkins was an American activist who was part of the Civil Rights Movement activities in the state of Mississippi during the 1960s. He became a member and organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1961, was a county organizer for 1964's "Freedom Summer", and assisted the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to unseat the regular Mississippi delegation from their chairs at the 1964 Democratic Party national convention in Atlantic City. He founded Southern Echo, a group that gives support to other grass-roots organizations in Mississippi. He also was a founder of the Mississippi Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.
Carpenters for Christmas was conceived to counteract a series of church bombings and arson attacks in Mississippi during and following the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. During the summer of 1964, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) organized a nationally supported campaign that challenged the racial segregation of the Mississippi Democratic Party and the state's systematic exclusion of black citizens from voting. Churches played a central role in this campaign, often housing Freedom Schools, serving as freedom election polling places, and serving as the venue for mass meetings. To counter this central role, segregationist forces began a campaign of terror against civil rights workers and the churches that gave them support:
Over the course of Freedom Summer, there were at least three murders, approximately 70 bombings or burnings, over 80 beatings, and over 1,000 arrests of civil rights activists. The COFO incident report, a single-spaced document that offered brief daily summaries, was over ten pages long.
Hartman Turnbow was a Mississippi farmer, orator, and activist during the Civil Rights Movement. On April 9, 1963, Turnbow was one of the first African Americans to attempt to register to vote in Mississippi, along with a group called the "First Fourteen".
David J. Dennis is a civil rights activist whose involvement began in the early 1960s. Dennis grew up in the segregated area of Omega, Louisiana. He worked as co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), as director of Mississippi's Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and as one of the organizers of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. Dennis worked closely with both Bob Moses and Medgar Evers as well as with members of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His first involvement in the Civil Rights Movement was at a Woolworth sit-in organized by CORE and he went on to become a Freedom Rider in 1961. Since 1989, Dennis has put his activism toward the Algebra Project, a nonprofit organization run by Bob Moses that aims to improve mathematics education for minority children. Dennis also speaks publicly about his experiences in the movement through an organization called Dave Dennis Connections.
The Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) was a local organization in Dallas County, Alabama, which contains the city of Selma, that sought to register black voters during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Dorie Ann Ladner was an American civil rights activist and social worker. Along with her sister Joyce, she was a leading community organizer in Mississippi for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1960s. She was a key organizer of the Freedom Summer Project, which promoted voter registration for African Americans in Mississippi. She participated in the March on Washington and the March from Selma to Montgomery.
Timothy Lionel Jenkins is an American social and civil rights activist, attorney, educator, and former business and government executive. In the 1960s, he was a co-founder and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as well as the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL).
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the Lowndes County Freedom Party (LCFP) or Black Panther party, was an American political party founded during 1965 in Lowndes County, Alabama. The independent third party was formed by local African-American citizens led by John Hulett, and by staff members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael.
Muriel Tillinghast is an American civil rights activist and former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary. Her efforts include volunteering for the Freedom Summer Project in Mississippi where she helped start the famed 1964 Freedom School and led Mississippi's Council of Federated Organizations (COFO).
