Freedom Vote

Freedom Vote
Part of theCivil Rights Movement
Freedom Vote broadside
Date	1963
Location	Mississippi
Caused by	Disenfranchisement of African-Americans in Mississippi
Resulted in	Submission of 78,869 ballots Creation ofFreedom Summer Establishment ofMississippi Freedom Democratic Party

TheFreedom Vote,also known as theFreedom Ballot,Mississippi Freedom Vote,Freedom Ballot Campaign,or theMississippi Freedom Ballot,was a 1963mock electionorganized in the U.S. state ofMississippito combatdisenfranchisementamong African Americans.The effort was organized by theCouncil of Federated Organizations(COFO), a coalition of Mississippi's four most prominent civil rights organizations,with theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC) taking a leading role.By the end of the campaign, over 78,000 Mississippians had participated.The Freedom Vote directly led to the creation of theMississippi Freedom Democratic Party(MFDP).

Background

In addition to apoll tax,the Mississippi voting registration procedure in 1963 required Mississippians to fill out a 21-question registration form and to answer, to the satisfaction of the white registrars, a question on the interpretation of any one of the 285 sections of the state's constitution.As a result, African-Americans made up a large portion of the voting-age population yet only a small fraction of them were registered; inMississippi's 2nd Congressional District,despite making up more than half of the total adult population, fewer than 3% of eligible black voters were registered.Statewide, between 5% and 6% of eligible blacks were registered to vote.

Freedom Vote

On October 6, 1963, a convention at the Masonic Temple in Jackson nominatedClarksdale, Mississippi,pharmacist andNAACPleaderAaron Henryfor governor, and activistEdwin Kingfor lieutenant governor.It was the first black-white integrated ticket for state leadership of Mississippi sinceReconstruction era.From October 14 to November 4, volunteers worked to spread information about the Freedom Vote as widely as possible amongst voters.

Beginning on November 2, polling stations set up in barber shops, churches, drug stores in black neighborhoods and began accepting ballots.When polling concluded on November 4, 78,869 ballots had been submitted by blacks across Mississippi, four times the number of blacks registered to vote.

Impact

The Freedom Vote accomplished four goals: It protested the exclusion of blacks by theMississippi Democratic Party,educated black Mississippians about how to register and vote, proved that black Mississippians were interested in voting and interested in change, and helped attract the attention of the federal administration to the fact that voting rights were being violated in Mississippi.