and King needed people who knew about political elections. At that time, Joe Lieberman, who was an editor of the Yale Daily News, was in Mississippi to work with a series of reports on the activities and programs of SNCC. Lieberman found the Freedom Vote Campaign interesting, so he spread the word at Yale about what type of help the campaign would need. After a few weeks, students from Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Fordham came to help with the campaign. With their participation, the Freedom Vote Campaign gained enough awareness and was reported in a newspaper, "The Free Press", by Bill Minor and R. L. T. Smith. To tabulate the result of the campaign, ballot boxes were placed in churches, business, and homes. Voting took place over a whole weekend so that many church congregations could vote at Sunday services. Although there were incidents where several voters were arrested, the campaign finished as a great success in demonstrating the willingness of African Americans to vote, with the participation of more than eighty thousand people. Within a week of the freedom election, college volunteers by Lowenstein's efforts made plans for a massive influx for Freedom Summer in 1964. The campaign also encouraged Paul Johnson to hint at a change in Mississippi's official line on race. After this campaign, Henry helped to create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to address civil rights in Mississippi. Later life Henry was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1982, holding the seat until 1996. He was a friend of powerful chairman of the U.S. Senate James Eastland. He died in 1997 of congestive heart failure at a hospital near his home in Clarksdale, following a stroke. References Further reading Aaron Henry with Constance W. Curry, Aaron Henry: The Fire Ever Burning, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (1995 book). External links SNCC Digital Gateway: Aaron Henry, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out Oral History Interview with Aaron Henry from Oral Histories of the American South The African American Registry Oral History Interview with Aaron Henry, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library 1922 births 1997 deaths African-American activists 20th-century American politicians Activists from Mississippi African-American state legislators in