The first “sit-in” was organized by four black college students at a segregated lunch counter in a Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1961. The students were denied service and thrown in jail by the local police. A few weeks later, sit-ins were organized at snack-bars in six large stores in Nashville. The demonstrators were again denied service, and the overwhelming majority of the local black community reacted by boycotting these stores. The sit-in movement spread quickly throughout the upper South and some neighboring Northern and Western states: Ohio, Illinois and Nevada. In all, four thousand black students were arrested. In November 1961, the United States Supreme Court ordered the desegration of restaurants. It was as a result of this sit-in movement that the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was organized by college students.

The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in February 1961 with the expressed goal of desegregating public transportation in the South. The first Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961 and went as far south as Birmingham. Denied both protection and permission to enter the state of Mississippi, they flew to New Orleans on May 17th. Meanwhile, two SNCC workers, Diane Nash and Ruby Doris Smith, had organized a second Freedom Ride that would continue the march from Birmingham to Jackson. This time, the Freedom Riders got off the bus in Jackson, escorted by National Guardsmen, and were arrested while trying to use white restrooms and waiting rooms. Further dramatizing their case, they served a full two month jail sentence, instead of paying a nominal fee set by a Jackson court.

Alarmed by the escalating violence in Mississippi, the Federal Government, along with many liberal organizations and national civil rights leaders, called for a two year moratorium on the Freedom Rides. A debate ensued among the members of SNCC over the effectiveness of “direct action” tactics in desegregating the deep South. Robert Moses, SNCC coordinator in Mississippi, and a group of SNCC field secretaries reached the conclusion that the only road to black empowerment in the South was in radically altering the racial composition of the electorate. Thus they organized a voter education and registration drive in Pike, Amite and Walthall counties and the town of McComb in Mississippi. Mob violence was unleashed against the SNCC workers and eligible black voters who responded to their call. In spite of harassment from police and county officials, SNCC's initiative within the next two years spread throughout the five congressional districts, establishing voting leagues and civic groups all over the state, and laying the groundwork for COFO's concentrated voter registration effort in the summer of 1964.

In 1963, COFO had less than 200 staff members, most of them SNCC field secretaries, working in Mississippi. As the result of the refusal by city and state officials to register eligible black voters during the summer COFO launched a Freedom Registration and Freedom Vote programs which ran parallel to the official elections in Mississippi. Eighty three thousand Freedom votes were thus registered. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was also launched in the same spirit, by SNCC militants and native black Mississippians, in the summer of 1963.

The Freedom registration drive quickly gained momentum throughout Mississippi, and particularly in the Delta region. By late August, more than 60,000 new registrations were recorded. At the National Democratic Party Convention, the sixty-four delegates elected by the MFDP, including Ella Baker of SNCC, Aaron Henry of NAACP, Lawrence Guyot, the chairman of MFDP and Fannie Lou Hamer, challenged the Mississippi Democratic Party which, they claimed, violated the principles of the national party; they demanded that they be seated instead of the regular all white delegation.

The MFDP enjoyed wide support from many liberal Northern delegates, and from members of the Credentials Committee at the Convention who proposed that both delegations be seated. The Johnson administration, however, opted for a weaker compromise, which would seat the all-white delegation while allotting at-large seats to Aaron Henry and Edward King and “guest” status to the remaining MFDP delegates. This compromise was overwhelmingly rejected, however. After the failure of the MFDP challenge, SNCC and other civil rights workers in Mississippi became disillusioned with participatory democracy, as well as with the support of Northern white liberals, although it would be several years before SNCC broke completely with its white supporters.

In addition to the general and Freedom registration drives, COFO had a growing number of programs which were classified into two broad areas: educational and social. They included the Freedom Schools, Federal Programs, Literacy and Work Study, Food and Clothing and Community projects. The Freedom Schools were a major element of the Summer Project. In addition to basic educational skills, the schools exposed the students to broad cultural influences beyond the South. They sought to establish the groundwork for a statewide youth movement. By August 1964, there were forty-one Freedom Schools functioning in twenty communities throughout Mississippi, with over 2,000 students and 175 full time teachers.

The Summer Project was successful on many counts. Its various programs -- particularly the voter registration drives, the Freedom Schools and the Community Centers (thirteen established over the summer) -- were intensively reported in the northern media, and broadly influenced liberal opinion and the New Left. It irreversibly altered the political stage in Mississippi, far beyond its limited scope and organizational strength. The participating organizations of COFO cooperated in a follow-up project in Mississippi in 1965, but soon afterward drifted apart as a result of wide conceptual, political and organizational differences.