In June 1964, the Mississippi Summer Project was launched to attempt to register African
Americans in Mississippi, which historically excluded most blacks from
voting.
Southern states had effectively disfranchised most African
Americans and many poor whites in the period from 1890 to 1910 by passing state
constitutions, amendments and other laws that imposed burdens on voter
registration: charging poll taxes, requiring literacy tests administered
subjectively by white registrars, making residency requirements more difficult,
as well as record keeping to document required items. They maintained this
exclusion from politics into the 1960s.
