Voter Education Project(VEP) raised and distributed foundation funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration work in thesouthern United States from 1962 to 1992.[1][2] The project was federally endorsed by theKennedy administration in hopes that the organizations of the ongoingCivil Rights Movement would shift their focus away from demonstrations and more towards the support of voter registration.[1]
Starting in 1960, the explosion of student-led activism ofsit-ins andFreedom Rides during thecivil rights movement created a public relations and foreign policy embarrassment for theKennedy administration.[3] In the early 1960s, Asian and African nations were liberating themselves from generations of racistcolonial rule, and both theU.S. andSoviet Union were fiercely competing with each other in aCold War struggle for the support of these new nations. The worldwide news stories, photos, and TV images of racist brutality, burning buses, and police suppression ofBlack civil rights undercut theState Department's effort to convince Asian andAfrican nations to align themselves withFree World camp in international affairs.[4]
Believing that the flood of negative news stories about race-relations in America were caused by the wave of student protests, PresidentJohn F. Kennedy and Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy urged civil rights leaders and organizations to engage in voter registration rather than nonviolentdirect-action demonstrations. Unofficially, they convinced several non-profit foundations to fund voter registration work in theSouth.[5] The Taconic, Field, New World, and Stern Family foundations agreed to contribute significant funds. To raise, administer, and distribute the money, theNAACP,Congress of Racial Equality,Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), andStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed the Voter Education Project (VEP) under the auspices of the non-profitSouthern Regional Council.[1]
Following theAlbany Movement, the VEP had registered close to 500 voters inAlbany, Georgia, within a period of two weeks. The group struggled in its early period and in early 1963, the SCLC was almost suspended from the organization due to inadequate reports about the group's funding.[1] By the end of 1964, however, the VEP distributed close to $900,000 (equal to $5,700,000 in 2006 dollars) to civil rights groups doing voter registration in the South and almost 800,000 newBlack Southern voters were added to the rolls.[1] Following the passage of theVoting Rights Act of 1965, it was reported that VEP-funded registration drives succeeded in registering an additional 175,000 new black voters.[1]
The VEP continued funding voter registration, education, and research efforts in the South until 1992 under subsequent directorsRandolph Blackwell,Vernon Jordan,John Lewis and Ed Brown.[2]
The VEP helped make great inroads in the registration of voters, especially in rural areas.[1] Contrary to the initial hopes of the Kennedy administration, the VEP did not reduce the violent realities of resistance to integration found in the South and highlighted by news stations around the world. In theDeep South, white resistance to Black voting rights turned out to be even more violent than their opposition to integrating lunch counters and bus depots. Instead of diminishing, news stories of police repression, brutality, bombings, and murders increased as white political leaders, theKu Klux Klan, and White Citizen Councils used arrests, terrorism, and economic retaliation to prevent Blacks from voting.[6]
| Archives at | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||
| How to use archival material |
Civil rights movement (1954–1968) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Events (timeline) |
| ||||||||
| Activist groups |
| ||||||||
| Activists |
| ||||||||
| By region | |||||||||
| Movement songs | |||||||||
| Influences | |||||||||
| Related |
| ||||||||
| Legacy |
| ||||||||
| Noted historians | |||||||||
