From 1962 to 1968, the Voter Education Project (VEP) raised and distributed foundation funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration work in the American South. The project was federally endorsed by the Kennedy administration in hopes that the organizations of the civil rights movement would shift their focus away from demonstrations and more towards the support of voter registration.
Starting in 1960, the explosion of ...
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From 1962 to 1968, the Voter Education Project (VEP) raised and distributed foundation funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration work in the American South. The project was federally endorsed by the Kennedy administration in hopes that the organizations of the civil rights movement would shift their focus away from demonstrations and more towards the support of voter registration.
Starting in 1960, the explosion of student-led Civil Rights activism, sit-ins, and Freedom Rides created a public relations and foreign policy embarrassment for the Kennedy administration. In the early 1960s, Asian and African nations were liberating themselves from generations of racist colonial rule, and both the U.S. and Soviet Union were fiercely competing with each other in a cold 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 of Black civil rights undercut the...
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