Which civil rights group organized the 1964 Freedom Summer voter-registration campaign in Mississippi?

The Council of Federated Organizations organized the 1964 Freedom Summer voter-registration campaign in Mississippi.

COFO was a coalition of major civil rights groups working together in Mississippi. Its member organizations included SNCC, CORE, the NAACP, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The coalition coordinated local organizing, volunteer recruitment, Freedom Schools, and voter-registration efforts.

Freedom Summer brought hundreds of mostly student volunteers to Mississippi. Organizers faced arrests, beatings, church burnings, and murders. The disappearance and killing of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner became an international story during the campaign.

COFO’s work helped build support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, although the campaign itself did not immediately remove Mississippi’s registration barriers. The organization is sometimes mistaken for SNCC, which supplied many field organizers but was only one part of the coalition.