The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was a coalition of the major Civil Rights Movement organizations operating in Mississippi. COFO was formed in 1961 to coordinate and unite voter registration and other civil rights activities in the state and oversee the distribution of funds from the Voter Education Project. It was instrumental in forming the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. COFO member organizations included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
NAACP
The prelude to the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi began after World War II when veterans such as Medgar Evers, his brother Charles Evers, Aaron Henry, and Amzie Moore returned home from fighting Nazi Germany. These veterans led and revitalized defunct chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) throughout the state.
After the war, Evers took a job as an insurance salesman. His travels took him to the poorest areas of rural Mississippi. His guilt over attempting to sell insurance policies to families who could barely afford food led to him joining the NAACP in the early 1950s. He soon became the organization's first field secretary in 1954. Friend, fellow veteran, and pharmacist, Aaron Henry also took up the reins of activism by founding and becoming the first president of the Clarksdale, Mississippi branch of the NAACP. Henry organized the local group to have two white men indicted for the kidnapping and rape of two young black girls. The men were acquitted, but getting an indictment at all was a major victory for the young organization. Evers also found organizing work frustrating throughout the 1950s. This work mainly included traveling throughout the state giving "pep talks" to local chapters and investigating racially motivated murders. Despite limited success, the theme of rivalry would reappear in these early stages. Evers, Henry, and fellow NAACP leader Amzie Moore would join the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) in 1951 despite objections from the national NAACP office. In addition to joining what Henry called the "homegrown" NAACP, Evers and Henry traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana for the organizational meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Roy Wilkins, national director of the NAACP, felt threatened by the charismatic leadership of the new organization's leader, Martin Luther King Jr. Evers objected to the national office's concerns on the basis that both organizations' goals were "identical", but respected the national leadership and opposed the SCLC's talk of an office in Jackson, Mississippi. Henry, however remained on the SCLC board and was soon elected state president in 1960. Ironically, this early rivalry would lead to the NAACP investing more time and attention to its Mississippi chapters.
SNCC
The reluctance of the NAACP to accept new ideas led Amzie Moore to a student conference in Atlanta in 1960. Moore, president of the Cleveland, Mississippi chapter and state vice-president of the NAACP, had become frustrated with the legalistic and slow moving national office, and respected the idealism and devotion of the new student movement in other parts of the country. In Atlanta, Moore met Bob Moses, a young teacher from Harlem in New York City. Moses, a Harvard graduate, was inspired by the North Carolina student sit-ins in February 1960. That summer he volunteered in the corner of the Atlanta SCLC office with the small staff of the newly formed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Moses traveled through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana recruiting young people for SNCC's fall conference. On this tour, Moore shared a vision with Moses that included a statewide, grassroots, voter registration drive spearheaded by students. Concerned about family and career matters at home, Moses agreed to return one year later to embrace Moore's dream. However, it was Moore who was not quite ready for Moses when he returned in the summer of 1961, so Moses found himself farther south in McComb, Mississippi alongside NAACP member C.C. Bryant. The McComb movement consisted of voter registration classes and local student protests. The work in McComb failed to bring any immediate results, but was invaluable training for Moses and the SNCC workers who followed him. They next took their new experiences and reputations with them into the Mississippi Delta.