Voter Education Project

Voter Education Project (VEP) raised and distributed foundation funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration work in the southern United States from 1962 to 1968. The project was federally endorsed by the Kennedy administration in hopes that the organizations of the ongoing 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 activism of sit-ins, and Freedom Rides during the Civil Rights Movement 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 State Department's effort to convince Asian and African nations to align themselves with Free World camp in international affairs.

Believing that the flood of negative news stories about race-relations in America were caused by the wave of student protests, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy urged civil rights leaders and organizations to engage in voter registration rather than nonviolent direct-action demonstrations. Unofficially, they convinced several non-profit foundations to fund voter registration work in the South. The Taconic, Field, New World, and Stern Family foundations agreed to contribute significant funds. To raise, administer, and distribute the money, the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC formed the Voter Education Project (VEP) under the auspices of the non-profit Southern Regional Council (SRC).

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