There were many members of the NAACP, the SNCC (Students' Non-violent Coordinating Committee), and CORE (Council on Racial Equality) who travelled to Mississippi in the late 1950's and early 1960's to organize voter registration there. Mississippi had a black voting-age population of nearly 45%, but only one in every nine was registered to vote. The state had created qualifying tests that prevented most from registering, and intimidation methods, such as loss of employment, made many residents frightened to try.
Among the leaders who were active in voter registrations and boycotts of white businesses were Martin Luther King of the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and the SNCC's Robert Parris Moses, Marion Barry, and Medgar Evers. Evers was shot and killed in July, 1963. Three volunteer workers for CORE (Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney) were murdered in June, 1964.
The person whom helped organize boycotts and get voters registered was Dick Gregory. Formerly a comedian, he became a civil rights activist, and ran for Mayor of Chicago as well as President.
First step of the Mississippi plan was to persuade the 10 to 15 percent of white voters still calling themselves Republicans to switch to the Democrats. Second step was to intimidate black voters because, even with all whites voting Democratic, the party could be defeated by the 55 percent black majority.
Force Act
$3,828
In the summer of 1964, civil rights organizations including the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) urged white students from the North to travel to Mississippi, where they helped register black voters and build schools for black children. The organizations believed the participation of white students in the so-called "Freedom Summer" would bring increased visibility to their efforts. The summer had barely begun, however, when three volunteers--Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, and James Chaney, a black Mississippian--disappeared on their way back from investigating the burning of an African-American church by the Ku Klux Klan. After a massive FBI investigation (code-named "Mississippi Burning") their bodies were discovered on August 4 buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Although the culprits in the case--white supremacists who included the county's deputy sheriff--were soon identified, the state made no arrests. The Justice Department eventually indicted 19 men for violating the three volunteers' civil rights (the only charge that would give the federal government jurisdiction over the case) and after a three-year-long legal battle, the men finally went on trial in Jackson, Mississippi. In October 1967, an all-white jury found seven of the defendants guilty and acquitted the other nine. Though the verdict was hailed as a major civil rights victory--it was the first time anyone in Mississippi had been convicted for a crime against a civil rights worker--the judge in the case gave out relatively light sentences, and none of the convicted men served more than six years behind bars.
Marian Anderson
The Freedom Riders came on buses into the south. These people helped black people register to vote. There were many uprisings against the Freedom Riders.
Medgar Evers
The person whom helped organize boycotts and get voters registered was Dick Gregory. Formerly a comedian, he became a civil rights activist, and ran for Mayor of Chicago as well as President.
Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist in Mississippi. He helped to get many black citizens of the state registered to vote. He organized boycotts of filling stations and other businesses that discriminated against African Americans for the Regional Council of Negro Leadership.
to help register hundreds of thousands of black voters in Mississippi
James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner
One person who helped black voters in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement was Fannie Lou Hamer. She co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and advocated for voting rights for African Americans. In terms of film boycotts, the Civil Rights Movement led to boycotts of films that practiced racial discrimination, such as the Hollywood film "Gone with the Wind" due to its racist depictions of black characters.
Freedom Summer (also known as the Mississippi Summer Project) was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many, African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population.
Suppressing black voters through fear and intimidation
Medgar Evars
First step of the Mississippi plan was to persuade the 10 to 15 percent of white voters still calling themselves Republicans to switch to the Democrats. Second step was to intimidate black voters because, even with all whites voting Democratic, the party could be defeated by the 55 percent black majority.