From 1962 to 1968, the Voter Education Project (VEP) raised and distributed foundation funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration work in the American South. The project was federally endorsed by the Kennedy administration in hopes that the organizations of the civil rights movement

Civil rights movement

The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...

 would shift their focus away from demonstrations and more towards the support of voter registration.

Background

Starting in 1960, the explosion of student-led Civil Rights

African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)

The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...

 activism, sit-in

Sit-in

A sit-in or sit-down is a form of protest that involves occupying seats or sitting down on the floor of an establishment.-Process:In a sit-in, protesters remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met...

s, and Freedom Rides

Freedom ride

Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decisions Boynton v. Virginia and Morgan v. Virginia...

 created a public relations and foreign policy embarrassment for the Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 administration. In the early 1960s, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

n and Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n nations were liberating themselves from generations of racist colonial

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

 rule, and both the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 were fiercely competing with each other in a cold war

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 struggle for the support of these new nations. The worldwide news stories, photos, and TV images of racist brutality, burning buses, and police suppression of Black civil rights undercut the State Department's

United States Department of State

The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

 effort to convince Asian and African nations to align themselves with Free World

Free World

The Free World is a Cold War-era term often used to describe states not under the rule of the Soviet Union, its Eastern European allies, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and other communist nations. The term often referred to states such as the United States, Canada, and Western European states such as the...

 camp in international affairs.

Founding

Believing that the flood of negative news stories about race-relations in America were caused by the wave of student protests, the Kennedy brothers urged civil rights leaders and organizations to engage in voter registration rather than nonviolent direct-action

Direct action

Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...

 demonstrations. Unofficially, they convinced several non-profit foundations to fund voter registration work in the South

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

. The Taconic, Field, New World, and Stern Family foundations agreed to contribute significant funds. To raise, administer, and distribute the money, the NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...

, CORE

Congress of Racial Equality

The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...

, SCLC

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...

, and SNCC

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...

 formed the Voter Education Project (VEP) under the auspices of the non-profit Southern Regional Council (SRC).

Activities

Between mid-1962 and the end of 1964, under the direction of Wiley Branton, the VEP distributed close to $900,000 (equal to $5,700,000 in 2006 dollars) to civil rights groups doing voter registration in the South. During this period, almost 700,000 new Black voters were added to the rolls, most of them in the mid- and upper-south states. But in the face of fierce resistance from white politicians and officials, few Blacks were registered in the Deep South states of Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

, Mississippi

Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

, Georgia

Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...

, and South Carolina

South Carolina

South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...

. It is only after passage of the Voting Rights Act

Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....

 of 1965 that VEP-funded registration drives succeeded in registering large numbers of Black voters in those Deep South states.

The VEP continued funding voter registration, education, and research efforts in the South until 1968 under subsequent directors Randolph Blackwell

Randolph Blackwell

Randolph T. Blackwell was a veteran of the African-American civil rights movement, serving in Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, amongst other organizations...

, Vernon Jordan, and John Lewis

John Lewis (politician)

John Robert Lewis is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1987. He was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , playing a key role in the struggle to end segregation...

.

Effect

Though the VEP helped make great inroads in the registration of voters, especially in rural areas, the results of their actions did not support the Kennedys' belief that shifting the civil rights focus from protest to voter registration would reduce embarrassing news stories. In the Deep South, white resistance to Black voting rights turned out to be even more violent than their opposition to integrating lunch counters and bus depots. Instead of diminishing, news stories of police repression, brutality, bombings, and murders increased as white political leaders, the Ku Klux Klan, and White Citizen Councils, used arrests, terrorism, and economic retaliation to prevent Blacks from voting.

External links

• Voter Education Project ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans