March 23 …

The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) was a grassroots political movement created during the height of the American civil rights era to empower disenfranchised African Americans in the rural Deep South and to establish an independent base of Black political power.

Also known as the Lowndes County Freedom Party (LCFP), the organization was established in Lowndes County in Alabama during the wave of activism tied to the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights campaign.

On March 23, 1965, civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael — along with his colleagues from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) — stopped in the county to initiate a sustained voter-registration effort instead of continuing the march. Collaborating with local leaders, they founded the organization as an independent political party aimed at challenging the white-dominated Democratic establishment, which had long excluded Black citizens from voting and governance.

The party adopted a black panther as its ballot symbol — an easily recognizable emblem for voters with limited literacy, representing dignity, strength, and self-defense. This founding initiative came shortly after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which provided federal protections that enabled many African Americans in Southern counties to begin registering to vote in significant numbers.

Key founders and organizers included Carmichael and local activist John Hulett, who served as the organization’s chairperson and later became one of the first African Americans to be successfully registered to vote in Lowndes County after decades of exclusion. SNCC organizers such as Courtland Cox, Bob Mants, Judy Richardson, Ralph Featherstone, and Jennifer Lawson worked alongside local residents — including the Jackson family, who hosted movement workers — to develop voter education programs and recruit candidates for local office.

SNCC field secretary Ruth Howard introduced the now-iconic black panther logo, which differentiated the party from the white rooster symbol adopted by segregationist Democrats in Alabama. Although the organization emphasized collective leadership and community organizing, Hulett emerged as one of its most prominent figures and eventually became the county’s first Black sheriff, demonstrating the movement’s long-term political impact.

The LCFO represented a coalition of poor rural African Americans, sharecroppers, farm workers, church leaders, and young activists striving for political representation after enduring decades of disenfranchisement and racial violence. At that time, although Lowndes County’s population was roughly 80 percent Black, almost none of its Black residents were registered to vote due to intimidation, literacy tests, and economic retaliation.

The organization primarily benefitted African American residents of the Alabama Black Belt, providing them with political education, voter access, and a pathway to local governance. The organization registered thousands of new voters and fielded a slate of Black candidates in the 1966 county elections, marking one of the earliest attempts at independent Black political organization in the post–Voting Rights Act South.

While LCFO candidates did not win office in the 1966 elections, the organization significantly influenced American political culture and civil rights activism. Its black panther emblem and philosophy of independent Black political power played a direct role in shaping the formation of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA. And it helped popularize the emerging ideology of Black Power in the late 1960s.

Over time, former LCFO activists entered mainstream politics, and the movement’s leaders — including John Hulett — eventually found electoral success as political conditions progressed.

Often called the “original Black Panther Party”, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization has been widely acknowledged by historians, civil rights scholars, and museums for its groundbreaking role in grassroots democracy, voter empowerment, and the evolution of American social justice movements.