Greenwood, Mississippi

Greenwood was one of the largest cotton processing centers in the Mississippi Delta. Black people made up about half of the city’s population and were the vast majority in the surrounding countryside, working mostly as sharecroppers and agricultural laborers on white-owned land. As of 1946, only 26 of Leflore County’s eligible 39,000 Black residents were registered to vote. SNCC started a voter registration project in Greenwood in the summer of 1962. Over the next two years, the project became one of SNCC’s most vital projects; the organization even temporarily moved its headquarters to Greenwood for the 1964 Freedom Summer Project.

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Mike Miller, “Southern Portrait: City with a Future, Greenwood, Mississippi,” undated, Michael J. Miller Civil Rights Collection, USM

Operation Mississippi: One Man, One Vote Campaign, September 1963, MFDP, Lauderdale County Records, WHS


“SNCC Staff Jailed as Greenwood Negroes Register in “First Breakthrough” in Miss.,” The Student Voice, April 1963, WHS