COFO, Council of Federated Organizations, coordinated the efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and other activist groups from 1963 to 1965. Aaron Henry, President; Bob Moses, Program Director; and David Dennis, Assistant Program Director, supervised the office and mentored young activists, building a strong grassroots base. Despite frequent brutal attacks, COFO survived the 1963 Freedom Vote, Freedom Summer of 1964, and voter registration campaigns.

“This place, for about three years, this room was the most important space for organizing the Civil Rights Movement in the state of Mississippi,” said Dr. Robert Luckett, Executive Director of COFO and historian, as he sat in the legendary building which is now used as a Civil Rights Education Center and museum. “From 1963-1965, this place was the epicenter. These images of Martin Luther King on the walls were taken here in this room. COFO only existed in Mississippi.”

COFO, now known as the COFO Civil Rights Education Center, was founded in 1961 to coordinate civil rights efforts with key activist organizations and local groups under one umbrella. Moses had an idea to harness everything each group was orchestrating and organize it together to be stronger and more efficient. It was a profound partnership that lasted until 1965.

“If you’ve studied the movement, SNCC, CORE, SCLC, and NAACP, you know they didn’t get along on a lot of things, said Luckett. “They competed for resources. They had different organizing philosophies, and they had different constituents.”

Pinpointing one noticeable difference, King was a founding member of the SCLC, with a large enrollment of Black ministers. Bob Moses was a leader for SNCC, which was comprised of college students. There were so many differences; the NAACP did not want Medgar Evers and the Mississippi branch to be a part of COFO, but Evers’ decision to join anyway was honored. Luckett believes there are many reasons Mississippi is not recognized as much as it should for its intricate part in the Civil Rights Movement, and losing Evers so early in the movement is one of them. However, the COFO Educational Center is working to correct that negation.

“Much of how the civil rights movement was told in this country has focused on Dr. King, Rosa Parks, (and other famous names) that didn’t spend a ton of time in Mississippi,” said Luckett. “They don’t talk about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Fannie Lou Hamer. They don’t discuss the 1964 Freedom Summer and its role. No other Civil Rights event held up to the magnitude of Freedom Summer with that many people for months, and COFO was an integral part in organizing that.”