challenged separate but equal policies and demanded integration of schools. Henry participated in the RCNL's annual meetings in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1955, which often attracted crowds of over ten thousand. Frequently a target of racist violence, Henry was arrested in Clarksdale repeatedly, and in one famous incident was chained to the rear of a city garbage truck and led through the streets of Clarksdale to jail. Civil rights movement activism While Henry remained active in the RCNL until its demise in the early 1960s, he also joined the Mississippi branch of the NAACP in 1954 and eventually worked his way up to state president in 1959. He started the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). In 1961 he organized a boycott of stores in the Clarksdale, Mississippi area that discriminated against African Americans both as customers and employees. He chaired delegations of Loyalist Democrats to the 1968 and 1972 Democratic National Conventions. In 1962, he was arrested for picking up an eighteen-year-old young man from Memphis, Tennessee. By 1968, after several appeals, the charge was not voided. In 1972, he was arrested again for soliciting sodomy from two undercover policemen. Unusual for politicians of the time, Henry was able to survive such scandals in part because they originated with Whites whose motives were suspect among Blacks, and also because Black voters recognized Henry's skill and ability as a proven leader. Freedom Vote campaign While Henry served as president of COFO in 1962, he made an effort to organize the Freedom Vote, which was the mock participation in the state gubernatorial election in November 1963. Henry worked this campaign with Allard K. Lowenstein, and they thought that showing black voters' willingness to vote in the mock election would make the nation realize that black Americans would in fact participate in the electoral process if given the opportunity. In this mock election, Henry was the candidate for governor, and Edwin King, who was a white Methodist minister at Tougaloo College in Jackson, was candidate for lieutenant governor. With Bob Moses, who managed the campaign, Henry and King tried to raise awareness of how Paul B. Johnson Jr. and Rubel Phillips, who were candidates of the actual election in 1963, ignored the Freedom Vote campaign and potential strength of black Americans' will to vote. Since they had only little experience in the political field, Henry