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OrganizationsLeaders in the Civil Rights Movement

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

While this interracial organization was founded in 1942, it flourished during the early and mid-1960s. Initially engaging in sit-in and picketing campaigns to "desegregate public accommodations in northern cities," CORE eventually became a participant in the Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer, and the Black Power Movement. Using its organizing skills to register voters and to gain national attention for civil rights activists, this organization helped to break down a number of legal barriers that for decades had prevented blacks and other minorities from exercising their constitutional rights.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Founded in 1909 by a group of influential whites hoping to counter the influence of Booker T. Washington and his supporters, the NAACP sought to bring about legal solutions to America's race problems. Influential members like Charles Hamilton Houston, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles Spingarn, and Thurgood Marshall turned this once tiny organization into what eventually became a litigating powerhouse. State Stallworth, a former NAACP president on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, noted that he "wouldn't dare put marching and singing with litigation." He explained that it was "all right for a little fellow down the street [to integrate] an ice cream parlor, but when you're talking about integrating banks, unions, industries, discrimination in schools, marching and singing ain't going to get it." During his tenure as president of the Gulf Coast NAACP, he met with Thurgood Marshall, who insisted that if blacks were not willing to go to court then they shouldn't be wasting his time. Indeed it was the NAACP's litigious character that made it difficult for many to join. This was especially the case for teachers, who of course, relied on white administrators for their livelihoods. Hobert Kornegay, a NAACP activist in Meridian, noted that in most cases "a teacher couldn't belong to the NAACP during that time and if they did, they'd have to use some other name. They'd give the money, but they'd use some other name." Otherwise they'd lose their job. For this reason, many NAACP members did their work in secret. NAACP activist and Pascagoula resident Franzetta Sanders summed up the difference between her group and the more militant organizations like SNCC and CORE. She noted that the other groups "lived among the community people and were involved with them, but we [NAACP] were more on the conservative side. Our philosophy was "let's negotiate, and do this like one, two, three, four, five, because we've got to know what we're going to do, and we've got to do it the way we're supposed to do it." That's the kind of summer [1964] that was because they were on one side and we were on the other. We would say "OK. Now look y'all. We need to think this out and do it this way because you can get hurt. You can disappear and we won't see you again." But they more or less did whatever they were here to do, and they were welcomed in the community. But at the same time we were busy doing what we were doing. And like I said we both were working toward the same goals," only with different tactics. Despite these differences, the NAACP made inroads into nearly every black community in the state.

NAACP

Its success had become so widespread that in the mid-1950s, the state of Mississippi banned the organization from operating within its borders. Despite this ban, courageous leaders like Aaron Henry and Medgar Evers continued to bring in recruits and to speak out against injustices in the state. While an uncounted number of its members and supporters were fired from their jobs, run out of town, or killed for their organizing work, the NAACP was able to win a number of lawsuits in the areas of education, voter registration, and employment practices, among others.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

(SCLC) Founded on February 14,1957 by Martin Luther

King, Jr. and a host of other ministers, this group sought to attack inequality and injustice with the use of nonviolent direct action. While it did not pioneer this tactic, SCLC successfully used this method to desegregate lunch counters, swimming pools, libraries, theaters, and a host of other public accommodations. With MLK as its president, the SCLC succeeded in raising enough money to keep the Civil Rights Movement under the watchful eye of the American media for many years. Despite these efforts, after King began to oppose openly the Vietnam War, the organization's coffers began to dwindle and as a result, the movement entered a decline from which it never recovered.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

(MFDP) Established in April 1964 at COFO's monthly state convention, the

MFDP was organized to challenge the state's "regular" Democratic party, which for decades had denied blacks the opportunity to participate in the electoral process. While its membership remained open to all Mississippians, the MFDP primarily consisted of legally disfranchised blacks. After having organized thousands of Mississippians, the MFDP hoped to unseat the regular contingent of delegates at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. After the White House failed to persuade the group to wait for better times, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the FBI and a number of close aides to spy on MFDP strategy meetings.

The failure of the MFDP to gain representation at this convention signaled the decline of the civil rights movement and a rise in the influence of black power advocates.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Created on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 15, 1960, SNCC's activities initially included coordinating student-led sit-ins in Greensboro and later throughout the Deep South, supporting these activists, and helping to publicize their activities. With leaders like Stokely Carmichael, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, and Julian Bond, among others, the group eventually led the charge against segregation and discrimination in the U.S. Its efforts during Freedom Summer led to the registration of thousands of voters as well as the creation of the MFDP.

Council of Federated Organizations (COFO)

The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was made up of SNCC, CORE, SCLC, and number of smaller local groups. This organization was originally founded in May 1961, but revamped in February 1962 to coordinate voter registration drives among disfranchised blacks. Its largest contribution to the Freedom Summer Project was "the organizing of blacks into a potent political force." Directed by Bob Moses, COFO launched a "freedom vote" in 1963 to prove to the federal government and others that blacks wanted to vote and would if given the opportunity. In mock elections throughout the state, some 80,000 blacks symbolically voted for Aaron Henry, a local activist running for governor, and Ed King, a white chaplain from Tougaloo College who acted as his running mate. The success of this freedom vote helped set the stage for the momentous changes that were to take place the following year. In 1964, COFO coordinated the efforts of all the civil rights groups that launched summer-long protests in Mississippi.

Works Cited

http://www.usm.edu/crdp/html/cd/groups.htm