Origins
For generations, African-Americans had endured widespread denial of their voting rights in Mississippi, and participation in the state Democratic Party was limited to whites only. Starting in 1961, SNCC and COFO had waged courageous campaigns against great and often violent opposition to register black voters with little success.
In June 1963, African-Americans attempted to cast votes in the Mississippi primary election but were prevented from doing so. Unable to vote in the official election, they organized an alternative "Freedom Ballot" to take place at the same time as the November voting. Seen as a protest action to dramatize denial of their voting rights, close to 80,000 people cast freedom ballots for an integrated slate of candidates.
Read more about this topic: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
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Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)