Kennedy scion’s Groundwork Project aims to give voice to marginalized Mississippians

Nonprofit focuses on voting, quality of life in four red states

Almost 60 years after his grandfather Robert F. Kennedy visited the Mississippi Delta to observe its poverty firsthand, Joe Kennedy III followed in his footsteps as part of his Groundwork Project, which aims to empower marginalized voters.

“We’re trying to make sure that everyone truly has the most fundamental, guaranteed right in this country, which is the right to vote,” Joe Kennedy III told The Mississippi Independent following his summer visit to Jackson and the Delta.

Kennedy, 44, whose grandfather was a U.S. senator and attorney general and a Democratic candidate for president at the time of his 1968 assassination, is himself a former congressman from Massachusetts who told the New York Times following his Mississippi visit, “I’m proud that my family has spent a lot of their years in office advocating for these people.”

Groundwork’s website describes its mission as to “show up in the states too often written off and invest in the local leaders working year-round to secure justice, equity and democracy for all.” The organization’s position is that its four focus states -- Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia -- have typically received less attention from left-leaning national organizations. In Mississippi, Groundwork is collaborating with the Mississippi Worker’s Center, the Steps Coalition and the state chapter of the NAACP.

“We believe that by investing in them, you’re going to strengthen the bond of that community and help them address the challenges that they confront and continue to grow stronger,” Kennedy said. The primary focus areas are voter registration and education, Kennedy added.

Mississippi is known for being less voter-friendly than many other states, which has sometimes corresponded to low voter turnout. The 2024 presidential election prompted low voter turnout across Mississippi -- slightly more than 60 percent of eligible voters, according to the state Secretary of State’s office — the lowest since 2004. In August 2025, only about 20 percent of voters in the Jackson-metro area showed up to the polls for the city’s municipal elections.

The reason for such low turnout is not simple apathy, according to Charles Taylor, executive director of the NAACP’s Mississippi chapter and southern organizing advisor for the Groundwork Project. Instead, it is rooted in a broad historical backdrop in which voting by marginalized residents has been systematically suppressed, he said.

Mississippi’s restrictive laws on voter registration and absentee voting, and its disenfranchisement of residents convicted of felony crimes, have earned the state a reputation for being one of the hardest places to vote in the United States. Black Mississippians historically faced legal disenfranchisement through Jim Crow laws, targeted literacy tests, poll taxes and the specter of vigilantes frightening or physically preventing residents from going to the polls.

In Kennedy’s view, overcoming voting challenges in Mississippi requires addressing the ripple effects of the state’s oppressive history in a complex, ever-changing political environment. During the Civil Rights Era, the federal government provided a partial check on local and state-level voter suppression, but that has changed: President Donald Trump has made clear that easy voting is no longer the goal – in fact, it is in his administration’s crosshairs.

In 1967, Robert F. Kennedy toured the Delta and was shocked by the hunger and poverty that plagued the region. As was reported in numerous media outlets, he was outraged that, in the richest country in the world, residents had lost their voice to the point where they were visibly suffering. Joe Kennedy III said he is now similarly outraged that Delta residents have faced boil water notices – in some cases, for two years -- and have limited access to healthcare. The quickest fix, he said, is to get more of them to the polls to effect change.

After serving four terms in the U.S. House and losing a 2020 U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Massachusetts, Kennedy opted against another run for political office and instead formed the Groundwork nonprofit to partner with local organizations to amplify marginalized voices and prompt change. Groundwork’s guiding light is that the remedy to many of the challenges faced by marginalized residents in red states begins at the polls, given that voting is often the only tool they have to keep the system accountable and responsive to their needs. Effecting change in Mississippi requires Groundwork to combat what Kennedy described as “the forces of segregation and disenfranchisement [that] have been active in Mississippi since the beginning.”

Long history of voter suppression

In 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War, Congress ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted the right to vote to U.S. citizens regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Despite that, by 1964 only 6.7 percent of eligible Black voters in Mississippi -- the state with the highest Black population -- were registered. Many state officials at the time attributed voter low registration numbers to lack of interest, despite obvious voter suppression efforts.

When Reconstruction ended in 1877 and the South was again left to its own devices, Jim Crow laws were passed to codify racial segregation and oppression in nearly all aspects of life. In Mississippi, these wide-reaching laws eroded the voting rights guaranteed to Black people through measures such as property requirements, poll taxes, literacy tests and personal risks related to their employment or threats of violence.

Drawing inspiration from voting rights activists including Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in Jackson in 1963, organizers mobilized for the Freedom Summer Project in 1964, challenging centuries of disenfranchisement and systemic racism against Black voters and shining a national spotlight on voter intimidation and suppression tactics in Mississippi and other southern states. That contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was intended to eliminate state and local legal barriers to minority voting rights.

The passage of the Voting Rights Act did not, however, give Black people unfettered access to the polls. Instead, proponents of voter suppression resorted to new tactics. In the years since, Mississippi lawmakers have continued to limit access to the polls through strict voter ID laws and absentee-voting requirements, prohibitions on online registration, same-day registration and early voting, and felony disenfranchisement. There are currently 23 felonies, including timber larceny, for which a conviction means permanent disenfranchisement. Mississippi ranks first in the nation with 10.6 percent of the state’s voting age population unable to vote due to a felony conviction, which includes 16 percent of the state’s Black residents, meaning one in seven Mississippians have permanently lost their right to vote.

The 2020 election and false claims of widespread voter fraud sparked further efforts to make voting more difficult. That election represented a sea change in how America approaches protecting its political process. Following his 2020 defeat and repeated false claims of voter fraud, and since his 2024 reelection into the White House, Trump has shifted the focus of the U.S. Department of Justice from protecting voting rights to eliminating voter fraud -- a problem that does not actually exist in any meaningful way, as has been stated by election officials and proved by numerous court challenges. Charles Taylor, executive director of the NAACP’s Mississippi chapter and southern organizing advisor for the Groundwork Project, said this reliance on election falsehoods translates into other forms of suppression, including limiting access to basic government services.

“I really wish this administration would actually focus on providing a better quality of life for all of the residents of this country and not just for the wealthy that have a certain ideology,” Taylor told The Mississippi Independent. He added: “If we want to connect the dots to voting and see increased engagement, we have to also address other folks’ needs, so we have to look at the approach of designing a better Mississippi through a civic engagement framework.”

As Groundwork’s southern organizing advisor, Taylor said his mission is to create a brighter future for the state of Mississippi, which includes ensuring access to the polls. With the current White House approach to voting rights, that issue has become increasingly urgent, he said.

On March 25, 2025, President Trump issued the Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections Executive Order, which put in place new federal requirements to ostensibly ensure election integrity. The first of these requirements directed the Election Assistance Committee, which has historically been an independent, bipartisan organization, to mandate that voters provide a proof-of-citizenship document when registering to vote. The executive order also dictates that mail-in ballots which arrive after Election Day be discarded and gave the quasi-governmental agency known as DOGE access to voter records to target and purge any that it deems fraudulent.

For Mississippians, the executive order adds another hurdle to an already difficult process. Mississippi is not among the five states that issue driver’s licenses which confirm citizenship status. Unable to rely solely upon the most common form of identification, Mississippians will now need a passport, military ID or other accepted form of documentation, which many simply do not have – and which can be difficult to obtain. In addition to the monetary cost of obtaining such identification, voters face missing time from work to register in person, as is required, and the cost of mobility to even get the registration office. For many poor, rural Mississippians, the costs of registering and voting may be prohibitive.

The discarding of mail-in votes also has a significant impact on Mississippians, with postal delays being more commonplace in rural areas that lack sufficient infrastructure to reliably and efficiently collect mail from homes scattered across a sparsely populated landscape. Added to that, the U.S. Postal Service has curtailed some of its operations by removing drop boxes and mail sorting equipment, which has led to nationwide delivery delays, all of which presents further impediments to Mississippians who have difficulty physically getting to the polls.

Empowering community voices

The Groundwork Project, with a comparatively small budget of $2.8 million, invests in hyper-local organizations through four-year grants. In addition to its work on voting rights across the state, Groundwork has partnered with the Mississippi Worker’s Center to empower low-wage workers in the Delta and advocate for better workplace conditions. The organization also networks with grantees to provide training, communications help and other resources to better meet the needs of their community.

This past June, Groundwork kicked off the third year of what’s known as the Organizing Accelerator in Jackson. The 20-week program connects emerging grassroots organizers, social justice advocates and civil rights leaders with mentors who help guide them towards the project’s capstone, the creation of an organizing project proposal to kickstart local efforts. For the kickoff event, the 16-member cohort convened in Jackson for a packed weekend that included visiting and learning the organizing history of the region, storytelling and networking training, and exchanging ideas with each other. In contrast to a state paradigm that has historically sought to quiet certain voices, Groundwork listens to the needs of residents living and dealing with such injustices on a daily. Groundwork then coordinates with the relevant organizations to amplify those voices.

“If we want to change Mississippi, it has to come from the ground,” Taylor said.

Added Kennedy: “I think to ignore the reality of the time that we are in would be folly as well. So, that’s not going to stop us from doing the work.”

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Image: Joe Kennedy III during his Delta tour (photo credit Ryan Sayles)