Voter Education Project:
A voter-registration cam-
paign in the deep South
supported by the Ken-
nedy administration and
funded by northern foun-
dations.
color, creed or national origin.’ In three hundred southern terminals, signs
segregating the races in waiting rooms and restrooms were taken down that
fall. It had taken the federal government fifteen years to enforce the Supreme
Court’s ruling for desegregated interstate travel.
To steer the movement into less confrontational activities, Robert
Kennedy promoted a Voter Education Projectto register blacks who would
use the polling booth to dissolve segregation. He gave VEP tax-exempt status
and lined up liberal philanthropies, including the Taconic, Field, and Stern
foundations, to pay $900,000 to run it. Donors would get tax deductions,
and activists draft exemptions. Many black activists accused the administra-
tion of a ‘trade-off’ bordering on ‘bribery.’ They suspected correctly that the
Kennedys wanted to shut down direct-action campaigns in favor of a quiet,
orderly crusade for ballot-box power. The president saw black voter regis-
tration as a highly beneficial activity for him and his party that would take
the media spotlight off the protesters, enroll more voters for Democratic can-
didates, and make southern Democrats in Congress more reasonable.
The offer of federal money was too good to pass up. That fall, the NAACP,
SCLC, CORE, SNCC, and Urban League launched VEP under the Southern
Regional Council’s auspices. To coordinate their activities in Mississippi,
these rival organizations formed an umbrella group called the Council of
Federated Organizations. Although the bulk of the project’s funds in the
first two years went to the Magnolia State, next to no gains were made there.
Across the South, VEP raised black voter registration from 29 to 43 per cent,
primarily in safer urban areas.
At the end of 1961, CORE pressed president Kennedy to end discrimina-
tion in public housing as he had promised. Thousands of civil rights sup-
porters mailed ballpoint pens to the White House, needling the president
that perhaps he had not signed the executive order desegregating public
housing because his pen was dry. The ‘Ink for Jack’ campaign was nearly
fruitless. Kennedy waited until after the 1962 midterm elections before sign-
ing a weak executive order banning such bias. The order applied only to
future housing financed by federal loans or grants, which was a small part of
the market.
The Freedom Ride forced president Kennedy to confront civil rights
issues, however weakly. He sent emissaries to report on racial wrongdoing
and negotiate an end to it. And he ordered US marshals to escort the riders.
Still, Kennedy faced a stiffer challenge. When a black student applied for
admission to an all-white university in Mississippi, would Kennedy send in
federal troops as Eisenhower had in Little Rock?70 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Council of Federated
Organizations: An um-
brella organization that
coordinated civil rights
groups during Mississippi
Freedom Summer.