JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – COFO. It stands for the Council of Federated Organizations and while many people have never heard of it, COFO is an organization born in Mississippi, that was a crucial piece of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

As the 1960s began, the struggle for freedom and equality was gaining momentum with numerous organizations mobilized for the fight. The Council of Federated Organizations, COFO, was first formed in 1961 to support jailed Freedom Riders; in 1962, it reorganized as an umbrella organization staffed by national civil rights organizations.

Dr. D’Andra Orey said, “Now, there was a little tension between the young and the elites, which they called the little older crowd, so what they decided to do was to found COFO and in founding COFO, they ended up bringing these alliances together and that’s how they actually got started.”

“It was extremely important, uh, because bringing them together, they became one. Now, they still had different philosophies but the same goal, which was to address segregation, but also to address voting participation,” Dr. Orey continued.

Dr. Orey said, at the time, only 6.7% of Blacks were registered to vote, so bringing civil rights groups like the NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality or CORE, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or “SNICK,” Southern Leadership Conference, and others under one umbrella, more ground could be covered by dividing and mobilizing into various districts to achieve that common goal: voter registration.

“And it’s extremely important to know that Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, came out of COFO, filed a lawsuit that ultimately led to Mississippi having the largest number of Black elected officials, so when they come here they need to know it had a direct impact on contemporary times,“ said Dr. Orey.

He continued, “All this is tied to COFO, you have various derivatives, if you will, associated with COFO, tentacles, if you will, you know, 1967 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, they run Robert Clark, Robert Clark wins. You had them going to Atlantic City and Fannie Lou Hamer.”

Robert Luckett, director of the Margaret Walker Center and the COFO Civil Rights Education Center said, “This space where we were, right here where we are, was literally the epicenter of organizing the civil rights movement in the state of Mississippi.”

We showed you the January ribbon-cutting ceremony unveiling upgrades to JSU’s COFO Civil Rights Education Center through an $80,000 Home Depot Retool Your School grant.

Why the upgrades, you may ask? This facility is much more than a museum and a piece of history, it is also a learning tool.

“For example, we use the COFO model when getting students to be involved in civic engagement,” said Dr. Orey.

Equally important, the COFO umbrella was also meant to protect and nurture grassroots activism in Mississippi.

NAACP state president Aaron Henry was COFO’s president, SNCC’s Bob Moses was program director and CORE’s Dave Dennis was assistant program director.

So, COFO was created not only to maintain order in the Mississippi Movement but also to provide a space for the local coalition designed to harvest the newfound energy of the Mississippi Movement.

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