The Mississipi Freedom Democratic Party was on a mission in 1964. As a mixture of whites and blacks, they wished to become a full part of the Democratic Party just only a month after had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In Mississippi, segregation made it impossible for blacks to particiapate in caucuses that decided the final delegates for the national convention. The MFDP held their own caucuses and selected 68 delegates to go to the 1964 convention in order to challenge the all white Mississipi delegation because it violated federal law against segregation.
What happened next was one of the biggests slaps in the face the Civil Rights Movement had ever seen from their allies in the Democratic Party.
Many remember Fannie Lou Hamer eloquent speech in front of the
Covention Credentials Committee about her life as a sharecropper in segregated Mississippi and her experiences of trying to register to vote. It was a speech that described her and her friends horrible treatment at the hands of the police. The beatings she took. The sexual mistreatment she survived. The humiliation she felt. She ended it with this simple plea and question.
All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
Thank you.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/...
What is not often examined is what happened the moment that Fannie Lou Hamer gave this speech and it was beamed directly to the Americian public. Lyndon Baines Johnson, a man who had become president after JFK's assassination and one of the leaders of getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, had a problem. LBJ needed the Southern Democrats, or better known as Dixiecrats were threatening to leave and walk out of the convention if the MFDP was seated in any form. This, in turn, would jeopordize his election chances in the south, costing him the presidency. So LBJ, did what he thought he had to do. He called an emergency television converence during Hamer's speech to distract the nation from what she was saying.
The nation heard what Hamer had to say anyway, and moved by her speech, many believed she and the other delegates from the MFDP should be seated. Thinking their victory was assured and his votes in the south in peril, LBJ did what he thought was best:
To ensure his victory in November, Johnson maneuvered to prevent the MFDP from replacing the regulars. After a frantic scramble, he ordered the chairman of the Credentials Committee not to decide the matter, and not to send the issue to the convention.
With the help of Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Party leader Walter Mondale, Johnson engineered a "compromise" in which the national Democratic Party offered the MFDP two at-large seats which allowed them to watch the floor proceedings but not take part. The MFDP refused this "compromise" which permitted the undemocratic, white-only, regulars to keep their seats and denied votes to the MFDP.
The Challenge
It was an absolute betrayal of the civil rights movement. Not only had they been thrown under the bus, the bus had exploded and been ran over by the train. The MFDP walked away heartbroken that their liberal brothers and sisters could betray them in such an awful way as to totally dismiss them and their concerns. They had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and in some cases, brutally murdered to register voters for the Democratic Party, only to find themselves displaced by segregationist once again in the hearts of the Democratic party. As Bob Moses himself proclaimed:
We were challenging them not only on racial grounds, obvious racial grounds, but we were challenging them on to recognize the existence of a whole group of people — white and Black and disenfranchised — who form the underclass of this country. Senator Humphrey was blunt about the party's unwillingness to face up to this when we "negotiated" at the Pageant Motel. Under no circumstances was Mrs. Hamer going to be part of any officially recognized Mississippi delegation. "The President will not allow that illiterate woman to speak from the floor of the convention," he said. No, they weren't prepared to hear her; it's not clear that they are now."
Bob Moses
In the aftermath of this decision by the Democrats, many in the civil rights movement went outside of the party to agitate and began their course of disruptive agitation. But while they did that, MLK Jr still worked with Democrats and the White House to pressure them and work with LBJ on the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This is a story of the history of the movement and a major turning point in the struggle for freedom in America. It is not pretty, it is not complimentary to the party, and it damn sure isn't fair.
We have a new civil rights struggle now, although I don't think the other one has ever quite went away. Homosexuals have the right to marry, have children, and live lives that every American has. What Obama has done with Rick Warren, on top of the issues of Prop 8, is extremely hurtful to those who believe in gay rights.
But, one lesson that MFPD has taught me, is that change comes from the bottom up, and not the top down. The Federal Government is moved by power, and not morality. It is also run by the mood of the nation.
We will not change Obama's mind until we change the nations mind as the MFPD did and numerous others in the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights moment did not throw away LBJ, in fact many of them still supported him after the fact and still support the Democratic Party that spit in their faces in 1964. They got enough power to be noticed by LBJ and then got him to move without alienating him from the cause. MLK Jr could have easily screamed "Bigot. You have betrayed my interests so screw you pal!" But he didn't because Martin Luther King Jr knew that half of the country believed like LBJ believed. So MLK Jr, and numerous others in the movement, forced him to change his mind with protests and the image of blacks being beat and hit in front of a worldwide audience. Then LBJ, pressured from the nation, in turn forced Congress to change their minds. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. LBJ got the votes for the Democratic Party he needed and was made to look good while blacks got their rights.
This is all part of the struggle. It hurts. It's painful. But when you get vindication. Man, you get vindication.