In 1964 the congress of racial equality and the student nonviolent coordinating committee launched the Freedom Summer (a campaign to register African American voters).
This campaign was an initiative of both civil organizations Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as a way to increase African American voter registration in Mississippi mainly, (At the time, only 10% of black population in Mississippi had registered), and to protect their right to vote, which had been aggressively attacked by some local authorities and the Ku Klux Klan.