Voter Education Project Organizational Records

The Voter Education Project (VEP) began in 1962 as part of the Southern Regional Council. Initially VEP granted funds to civil rights organizations to support voter education, voter registration drives, and voting-related research. In 1964, Vernon Jordan, the second executive director of the VEP, expanded the programs goals to include citizenship training, voter education, and leadership training in the southern United States, while continuing to provide funds to independent voter and civil rights groups, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the League of Women Voters. The VEP’s work with the League of Women Voters is highlighted in the materials below. In 1971, VEP under the leadership of John Lewis, became an independent organization and functioned as a research center and became known as an authoritative source for statistics on southern elections and voter registration in general. Lewis also forged the VEP into an activist organization, launching Voter Mobilization Tours with Georgia state legislator and civil rights advocate Julian Bond.

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Newspaper article regarding how the Southern Black vote in the 1976 presidential election was the most decisive and influential single exercise of minority political power in this century. The Voter Education Project (VEP) conducted a preliminary survey of the effect of the Black vote on November 2, and found that between 60 and 70 percent of all registered Black voters turned out to vote. Over 95 percent of all southern Blacks were estimated to have cast their ballot for Jimmy Carter for President. The VEP study found that a recently-expanded base of registered Black voters and a record Black turnout combined to provide President-elect Jimmy Carter with the obvious margin of victory across the South, with the exception of Virginia. 1 page.

The VEP predicted a record turnout of Black voters in the South for the 1976 US presidential election, based on reports of record Black voter registration in local drives conducted by the organization and enthusiasm on the part of local organizations and volunteers. 1 page.