In 1954, Henry joined the local chapter of the NAACP. He saw a need to organize and manage the various organizations that were associated with the NAACP. In order to coordinate these activities, inclusive of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS), Henry and others developed a management organization called the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). The organization, which was started in 1955 but remained dormant until the 1960s, took on the large-scale initiative toward adult education and voter registration. The voter registration project was to have several headquarters in order to support the community while registering persons to vote. Most blacks that tried to register suffered all types of abuse, threats, and violence. Many were arrested on fake charges, beaten, fired from their jobs, threatened, and some were run out of town. COFO played a key part in educating and supporting the black communities in Mississippi.
Henry’s commitment as a leader along with his unflinching determination to fight segregation earned him the position of president of the state chapter of the NAACP in 1960. In December 1960 the Supreme Court ordered the integration of all bus stations and terminals serving interstate travelers. When blacks tried to use terminals and front seating in busses they were often thrown off, beaten, or jailed. Henry and COFO supported the Freedom Riders and their efforts to openly challenge and protest such treatment. The Freedom Riders’ travels across the South were met with violent attacks. They arrived in Mississippi in May 1961. Henry was among the group arrested at Jackson, Mississippi. Along with Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Toure), Jim Forman and other protestors, he was taken to the Parch-man State Penitentiary. Many could have paid the fines and been released, but they chose not to in order to dramatize the racism and segregation and also not give their money to the racist state. By the end of the summer over three hundred protesters had been arrested and were being held at the penitentiary. Henry by his own account had been arrested over thirty-eight times in the struggle for equal rights.
One of Henry’s plans for fighting segregation in the local community was a 1961 boycott of businesses in Clarksville, Mississippi, which discriminated against black customers and did not hire blacks. The boycott, which began in 1961, saw the city respond by arresting Henry and six other protestors for conspiring to withhold trade. Although the protesters were convicted, the ruling was overturned on appeal, and the boycott continued. Henry was then arrested for sexually harassing a white female hitchhiker and was convicted in March 1962. The appeals count overturned the conviction, and Henry was exonerated. As the boycott continued, Henry claimed that the local prosecutor and the police chief falsified the sexual harassment charges against him on the basis of his civil rights activities. The prosecutor and the police chief sued Henry and were awarded $80,000, but the verdict was again reversed by an appeals court. The city officials had done all they could to terrorize Henry, including fire bombing his pharmacy and having his wife fired from her teaching position. Henry remained steadfast in his work for equal rights. The boycott continued for three years with decreasing effect because of transportation problems in trading in other places. The boycott was called with the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The year 1963 was a difficult time for the movement and for Henry. Henry’s close friend and colleague in the movement, Medgar Evers, was killed at his home in June. Henry had gone to see Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, regarding their testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in Washington D.C. the next day. Henry had a speech to give the next morning in Houston to the Texas Pharmaceutical Association and planned to meet Evers in Washington that afternoon. Evers took Henry to the airport after their meeting. Back at home, Evers was murdered in his driveway. Henry heard the report of Evers’s death the next morning as he dressed for his speech. Evers and Henry had been friends since the early 1950s. They had investigated cases of racial violence to obtain affidavits for witnesses. At the time Henry was supporting Evers in his bid as field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP. They both were aware that each day could be their last. Henry lost a friend, and the country lost a courageous fighter for the movement. Henry later learned it was a coin-toss to determine whether Henry or Evers would be the target of the murder. Henry was quoted in his New York Times obituary as having said that once Evers was murdered, he made “sure he didn’t die in vain.”
Although before 1963 there had been some success in getting blacks registered to vote, there was a need to increase efforts. Senators James O. Eastland and John Stennis told Congress that blacks did not vote because they were too lazy and unconcerned about political issues. In response to these erroneous statements, under Henry’s guidance COFO orchestrated a mock election for the governor of Mississippi in 1963. The plan was to show the nation that blacks would vote if given the opportunity. The plan was also to stress the important issues that the actual campaign ignored, in deference to an aggressive racist agenda. In the mock campaign, Henry was the candidate for governor and Edwin King, a white Methodist minister from Tougaloo College, a historically black college in Jackson, was the candidate for lieutenant governor. The two men traveled around Mississippi, giving campaign speeches and operating as an official campaign. After the election and the votes were counted, eighty thousand blacks had voted which was nearly three times the official number of black registered voters. As a result of the mock election, the officially elected governor of Mississippi stated that the state would no longer be divided based on race, color, or creed. For black voters this was a start.
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