Civil rights movement

=== Voter registration organizing ===
After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as [[Amzie Moore]], [[Aaron Henry (politician)|Aaron Henry]], [[Medgar Evers]], and others asked SNCC to help register black voters and to build community organizations that could win a share of political power in the state. Since Mississippi ratified its new constitution in 1890 with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, it made registration more complicated and stripped blacks from voter rolls and voting. Also, violence at the time of elections had earlier suppressed black voting.

By the mid-20th century, preventing blacks from voting had become an essential part of the culture of white supremacy. In June and July 1959, members of the black community in Fayette County, TN formed the [[Fayette County Civic and Welfare League]] to spur voting. At the time, there were 16,927 blacks in the county, yet only 17 of them had voted in the previous seven years. Within a year, some 1,400 blacks had registered, and the white community responded with harsh economic reprisals. Using registration rolls, the White Citizens Council circulated a blacklist of all registered black voters, allowing banks, local stores, and gas stations to conspire to deny registered black voters essential services. What's more, sharecropping blacks who registered to vote were getting evicted from their homes. All in all, the number of evictions came to 257 families, many of whom were forced to live in a makeshift Tent City for well over a year. Finally, in December 1960, the Justice Department invoked its powers authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to file a suit against seventy parties accused of violating the civil rights of black Fayette County citizens.<ref>Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee, an Oral History of the Struggle For Civil Rights by Robert Hamburger (New York; Links Books, 1973)</ref> In the following year the first voter registration project in [[McComb, Mississippi|McComb]] and the surrounding counties in the Southwest corner of the state. Their efforts were met with violent repression from state and local lawmen, the [[White Citizens' Council]], and the Ku Klux Klan. Activists were beaten, there were hundreds of arrests of local citizens, and the voting activist Herbert Lee was murdered.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961mccomb Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100707051408/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961mccomb |date=July 7, 2010 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

White opposition to black voter registration was so intense in Mississippi that Freedom Movement activists concluded that all of the state's civil rights organizations had to unite in a coordinated effort to have any chance of success. In February 1962, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP formed the [[Council of Federated Organizations]] (COFO). At a subsequent meeting in August, SCLC became part of COFO.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962cofo Council of Federated Organizations Formed in Mississippi] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004011259/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962cofo |date=October 4, 2006 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

In the Spring of 1962, with funds from the [[Voter Education Project]], SNCC/COFO began voter registration organizing in the Mississippi Delta area around [[Greenwood, Mississippi|Greenwood]], and the areas surrounding [[Hattiesburg, Mississippi|Hattiesburg]], [[Laurel, Mississippi|Laurel]], and [[Holly Springs, Mississippi|Holly Springs]]. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce opposition{{mdash}}arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. Registrars used the [[literacy test]] to keep blacks off the voting roles by creating standards that even highly educated people could not meet. In addition, employers fired blacks who tried to register, and landlords evicted them from their rental homes.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm Mississippi Voter Registration – Greenwood] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004011259/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm |date=October 4, 2006 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state.

Similar voter registration campaigns{{mdash}}with similar responses{{mdash}}were begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in [[Louisiana]], [[Alabama]], southwest [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], and [[South Carolina]]. By 1963, voter registration campaigns in the South were as integral to the Freedom Movement as desegregation efforts. After the passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64" /> protecting and facilitating voter registration despite state barriers became the main effort of the movement. It resulted in the passage of the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965, which had provisions to enforce the constitutional right to vote for all citizens.