American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to primarily African American citizens of United States. There have been many movements on behalf of other groups in the U.S. over time, but the term is often used to refer to the struggles between 1955 and 1968 to end discrimination against African-Americans and to end racial segregation, especially in the U.S. South. See African American for information on how various terms have been used at that time period for African Americans.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

COFO had held a Freedom Vote in Mississippi in 1963 to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. More than 90,000 people voted in mock elections which pitted candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic party candidates. In 1964, organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the all-white slate from the state party. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, they held their own primary, selecting Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray to run for Congress and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 national Democratic convention.

Related Topics:
Fannie Lou Hamer - Congress

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Their presence in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was very inconvenient, however, for the convention organizers, who had planned a triumphal celebration of the Johnson Administration’s achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over racism within the Democratic Party itself. Johnson also was worried about the inroads that Barry Goldwater’s campaign was making in what previously had been the Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South" and the support that George Wallace had received during the Democratic primaries in the North. Other all-white delegations from other southern states had threatened to walk out if the all-white slate from Mississippi were not seated.

Related Topics:
Atlantic City, New Jersey - Democratic Party - Barry Goldwater - George Wallace

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Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee, where Fannie Lou Hamer testified eloquently about the beatings that she and others were given and the threats they faced for trying to register to vote. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"

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Johnson attempted to preempt coverage of Hamer's testimony by calling a hastily scheduled speech of his own. When that failed to move the MFDP off the evening news, he offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the compromise. As Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers' successor as President of the NAACP 's Mississippi affiliate, stated:

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"Now, Lyndon made the typical white man's mistake: Not only did he say, 'You've got two votes,' which was too little, but he told us to whom the two votes would go. He'd give me one and Ed King one; that would satisfy. But, you see, he didn't realize that sixty-four of us came up from Mississippi on a Greyhound bus, eating cheese and crackers and bologna all the way there; we didn't have no money. Suffering the same way. We got to Atlantic City; we put up in a little hotel, three or four of us in a bed, four or five of us on the floor. You know, we suffered a common kind of experience, the whole thing. But now, what kind of fool am I, or what kind of fool would Ed have been, to accept gratuities for ourselves? You say, Ed and Aaron can get in but the other sixty-two can't. This is typical white man picking black folks' leaders, and that day is just gone."

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Hamer put it even more succinctly:

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"We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we’d gotten here. We didn't come all this way for no two seats, 'cause all of us is tired."

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The MFDP kept up its agitation within the convention, however, even after it was denied official recognition. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to pledge allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats vacated by the Mississippi delegates, only to be removed by the national party. When they returned the next day to find that convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before, they stayed to sing freedom songs.

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The 1964 convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the Civil Rights Movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP itself. The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City, inviting Malcolm X to speak at its founding convention and opposing the war in Vietnam.

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