Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story that Awakened America

The CORE was an interracial civil rights organization established in Chicago in 1942 by African American activist James Farmer. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings, the organization focused on nonviolent direct-action strategies to battle racial prejudice. The CORE organized sit-ins and other forms of protests against discrimination in public spaces. Interracial solidarity was key to the organization, which expanded into several Northern cities.

In the 1950s, the CORE directed its attention to the Southern civil rights movement, organizing voting registration drives and training activists for direct action protests. The CORE supported Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on activism projects. In 1961, Farmer also organized the Freedom Rides that challenged segregation of public transport. The CORE continued its work as police brutality and harassment of activists increased. By the late 1960s, Farmer stepped down, signaling a political shift in the organization toward militancy and Black nationalist politics.

The COFO was a coalition of major civil rights organizations in operation during the Mississippi civil rights campaign of 1962-1965. It was established in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962 and included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, the NAACP, and other regional activist groups.

Disagreements within the movement about activist strategies indicated the need for unity. The COFO focused on coordinating the activities of the different organizations. Its objective was to promote effective leadership and reinforce civil rights efforts by solidifying common goals. The COFO sought to assuage conflict and rivalries among the organizations, manage funds for voting registration projects, and support efforts for equality in education and health care. The Council also supported and organized grassroots activism in Mississippi, focusing particularly on the Mississippi Delta and the region’s poor Black sharecroppers. As such, it is key to the work’s exploration of The Impact of Grassroots Activism on the Civil Rights Movement.

The COFO organized several voting registration projects in Mississippi amid increasing backlash to the civil rights movement. Securing funding from the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project in 1963, the COFO organized a major voting registration drive across the state. During the campaign, a mock election named the Freedom Vote took place to demonstrate African Americans’ commitment to their voting rights. The Freedom Vote laid the foundations for the Freedom Summer in 1964, a drive to increase Black voting across the South. Ongoing tensions and arguments within the organization led to its dissolution in 1965.

Jim Crow was a series of laws established in the Southern United States that legalized racial segregation and guaranteed the disenfranchisement of African Americans. The Jim Crow era lasted from the end of Reconstruction in the late 19th century to the victories of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. 

Following the end of the Civil War and the abolition of enslavement, emancipated Black people claimed their freedom and autonomy. However, the Constitution did not clarify their social status as citizens. Since the Southern states were allowed to rebuild their own government following Reconstruction, the dominant planter class sought to reestablish its economic privileges and enforce a system similar to enslavement to control labor. “Black Codes” were the first laws that limited Black people’s freedom, disenfranchising them and relegating them to plantation labor with meager or no wages. Meanwhile, white-supremacist violence intensified with the rise of groups like the KKK, which provided vigilante backing for the new regime. By the late 1870s, Jim Crow legislation codified racism in the South, enforcing racial segregation in public spaces, transportation, healthcare, and schools.

Jim Crow expanded in the 20th century, reinforcing Southern society’s foundation on white supremacy. Racist violence through lynchings and riots escalated, and many Black Southerners escaped to the North in what is historically known as the Great Migration. While civil rights activists battled Jim Crow as early as the late 19th century, activism intensified in the post-WWII years with the rise of the civil rights movement. The landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act brought monumental shifts in American race relations, effectively ending the Jim Crow era, though de facto segregation remained in some walks of life.

Established in 1909 in New York City, the NAACP is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the US. Since its founding, the NAACP has pursued its goals through legal battles, peaceful protests, and lobbying. The organization played a particularly crucial role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. One of its major achievements was the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, as a result of which the US Supreme Court deemed segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The NAACP also won several other court battles regarding civil rights and helped organize the monumental March on Washington in 1964. Nevertheless, the organization drew criticism from some activists for its strategy of working through the justice system rather than through direct action. Members of the NAACP were subject to constant threats and harassment, with Medgar Evers’s assassination being the best-known example. Despite several crises within the organization, the association continues to advocate for social justice and equality in the 21st century.

The RCNL was a civil rights organization founded in 1951 in Mount Bayou, Mississippi; it remained active into the early 1960s. Its founder, T. R. M. Howard, was a wealthy Black businessman for whom Evers worked as an insurance salesman; the group was thus critical in shaping Evers’s early civil rights activism. The organization focused initially on educating the Black community about economic autonomy, education, and voting rights. The RNCL attracted significant civil rights leaders and gradually expanded into grassroots activism and direct-action protests, organizing one of the first boycotts in Mississippi against segregation.