The Freedom Vote, also known as the Freedom Ballot, Mississippi Freedom Vote, Freedom Ballot Campaign, or the Mississippi Freedom Ballot, was a 1963

mock election A mock election is an election for educational demonstration, amusement, or political protest reasons to call for free and fair elections. Less precisely it can refer to a real election purely for advisory (essentially without power) committees o ...

organized in the U.S. state of

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

to combat

disenfranchisement Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. D ...

among African Americans. The effort was organized by the

Council of Federated Organizations 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 sta ...

(COFO), a coalition of Mississippi's four most prominent civil rights organizations, with the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) 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 segrega ...

(SNCC) taking a leading role. By the end of the campaign, over 78,000 Mississippians had participated."Over 70,000 Cast Freedom Ballots." ''The Student Voice,'' vol. 4, no. 4, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, November 11, 1963
here
(Links to an external site.). ''Freedom Summer Collection,'' Wisconsin Historical Society, 2014. The Freedom Vote directly led to the creation of the

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), also referred to as the Freedom Democratic Party, was an American political party created in 1964 as a branch of the populist Freedom Democratic organization in the state of Mississippi during the ...

(MFDP).

Background

In addition to a

poll tax A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...

, 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; in

Mississippi's 2nd Congressional District Mississippi's 2nd congressional district (MS-2) covers much of Western Mississippi. It includes most of Jackson, the riverfront cities of Greenville and Vicksburg and the interior market cities of Clarksdale, Greenwood and Clinton. The distr ...

, 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 nominated

Clarksdale, Mississippi Clarksdale is a city in and the county seat of Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States. It is located along the Sunflower River. Clarksdale is named after John Clark, a settler who founded the city in the mid-19th century when he establishe ...

, pharmacist and

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

leader Arron Henry for governor, and activist Edwin King for lieutenant governor. It was the first black-white integrated ticket for state leadership of Mississippi since

Reconstruction era The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloo ...

. 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 the

Mississippi Democratic Party The Mississippi Democratic Party is the affiliate of the Democratic Party in the state of Mississippi. The party headquarters is located in Jackson, Mississippi. The party has members and County Executive Committees in all 82 counties of the st ...

, 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.

References

{{Civil rights movement, state=uncollapsed 1963 in Mississippi African-American history of Mississippi Civil rights movement History of voting rights in the United States History of African-American civil rights Suffrage organisations in the United States