Freedom Vote

The 1963 Freedom Ballot (also known as the Mississippi Freedom Ballot or simply Freedom Vote) was a mock-election organized in the United States to combat the disenfranchisement of blacks in Mississippi.

The effort was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of Mississippi's four most prominent civil rights organizations, with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) taking a leading role. By the end of the campaign, some 78,000 Mississippians had participated. The Freedom Ballot directly led to the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

Background

In addition to a poll 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 registrars, a question on interpretation of any one of 285 sections of the state constitution. Such requirements unfairly restricted blacks and poor whites, who often didn't have access to a proper education and couldn't pay the tax. African-Americans made up a large portion of the voting population yet only a small fraction of them were registered; in Mississippi's 2nd Congressional District, despite making up more than half of the total adult population, fewer than 3% of eligible black voters were registered.