The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was a political party created in the United States state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement. It was organized by black and white Mississippians, with assistance from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to win seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention for a slate of delegates elected by disenfranchised black Mississippians and white sympathizers. It ultimately failed, but was said to succeed in dramatizing the violence and injustice by which they claimed the white power structure governed Mississippi. It was also said to have helped the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The United States of America — also referred to as the United States, the U.S.A., the U.S., America¹, the States, or (archaically) Columbia — is a federal republic of 50 states located primarily in central North America (with the exception of two states: Alaska and Hawaii). ... A U.S. state is any one of the 50 states which have membership of the federation known as the United States of America (USA or U.S.). The separate state governments and the U.S. federal government share sovereignty. ... State nickname: Magnolia State Other U.S. States Capital Jackson Largest city Jackson Governor Haley Barbour Official languages English Area 125,546 km² (32nd)  - Land 121,606 km²  - Water 3,940 km² (3%) Population (2000)  - Population 2,697,243 (31st)  - Density 23. ... 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 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 all Americans. ... The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC, pronounced snick) was one of the primary institutions of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. ... The United States Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed requiring would-be voters to take literacy tests and provided for federal registration of African American voters in areas that had less than 50% of eligible voters registered. ...

The official Mississippi state Democratic Party in 1964 was, like Democratic party organizations elsewhere in the Deep South, committed to defending white supremacy. It had two very powerful Senators, James Eastland and John Stennis, and five senior House members. The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States. ... Red shows states most commonly considered a part of the Deep South. ... The United States Senate is the upper house of the U.S. Congress, smaller than the United States House of Representatives. ... James Oliver Eastland (November 28, 1904–February 19, 1986) was an American politician from Mississippi who served in the U.S. Senate briefly in 1941 and again from 1943 to 1978. ... John Cornelius Stennis (August 3, 1901 - April 23, 1995) was a Senator from the state of Mississippi. ... The House of Representatives is the larger of two houses that make up the U.S. Congress, the other being the United States Senate. ...

Yet by 1964 the official state party no longer supported the national Democratic party or the President, Lyndon B. Johnson, because of Johnson's work to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. State Party officials openly campaigned for the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, who was running strongly in the South on the strength of his opposition to civil rights laws of the type advocated by Johnson. Lyndon Baines Johnson ( August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was an American politician. ... President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ... The Republican Party, often called the GOP (for Grand Old Party, although one early citation described it as the Gallant Old Party) [1], is one of the two major political parties in the United States. ... Barry Goldwater Barry Morris Goldwater ( January 1, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a United States politician and a founding figure in the modern conservative movement in the USA. Goldwater personified the shift in balance in American culture from the Northeast to the West. ...

Civil rights organizations 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 pitting candidates from the Freedom Party against the official State 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 the 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. Events January-February January 11 - The Whisky A Go-Go night club in Los Angeles, the first disco in the USA, is opened. ... Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6, 1917–March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader. ... A congress is a gathering of people, especially a gathering for a political purpose. ...

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 was also worried about the inroads that Barry Goldwater’s campaign was making in what had previously 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. Atlantic City is a city located in Atlantic County, New Jersey, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 40,517. ... The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States. ... George Corley Wallace (August 25, 1919–September 13, 1998) was an American politician who was elected Governor of Alabama (as a Democrat) four times (1962, 1970, 1974 and 1982) and ran for U.S. President (in 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1976). ...

Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee, where Fannie Lou Hamer testified 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?"

Johnson attempted to preempt coverage of Hamer's testimony by calling a hastily scheduled speech of his own. That did not, however, stop the networks from covering her story as part of the evening news. Her testimony had created enough uproar that Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise": they would receive two non-voting at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would take its seats.

Johnson used all of his resources, mobilizing Walter Reuther, one of his key supporters within the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and his Vice-Presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey, to put pressure on Martin Luther King, Jr. and other mainstream civil rights leaders to bring the MFDP around, while directing J. Edgar Hoover to put the delegation under surveillance. Walter Philip Reuther (b. ... Hubert Horatio Humphrey II (May 27, 1911–January 13, 1978) was the 38th Vice President of the United States, twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota and was mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota. ... Martin Luther King Jr. ... 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 all Americans. ... Hoover in 1961 John Edgar Hoover ( January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was appointed Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on May 10, 1924, and remained so until his death in 1972, having been appointed to that position for life by Lyndon Johnson. ...

The MFDP, however, rejected the compromise. As Aaron Henry, then the President of the NAACP's Mississippi affiliate, stated: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. ...

"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."

Hamer put it even more succinctly:

"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."

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 yesterday, they stayed to sing freedom songs.

The 1964 convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the civil rights movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP itself. The MFDP continued to organize to replace the "regular" State Party, challenging the right of the Mississippi delegation to the House of Representatives to hold office on the ground that Mississippi's systematic denial of blacks' voting rights made their election unconstitutional. It elected Robert Clark to the Mississippi Legislature in 1967, then made up part of the "Loyalist" slate that ousted the white supremacist "regular" delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago . Even then the "Regulars" did not disappear entirely, but continued to run state Democratic Party primary elections while the National Democratic Party recognized the "Loyalists." 1967 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... Police and protesters at the Convention The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago by the United States Democratic Party, for the purposes of choosing the Democratic nominee for the 1968 U.S. Presidential Election. ... Chicagos skyline at day Chicago is the third largest city in the United States, after New York City and Los Angeles, with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 US Census. ...

The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City, inviting Malcolm X to speak at its founding convention and opposing the war in Vietnam. But while its efforts eventually helped elect more black office-holders in Mississippi than in any other state, the MFDP itself found it harder to keep its organization afloat. It slowly faded out of existence after its alliance with the more mainstream forces in the "Loyalist" Democrats. Malcolm X (pronounced Malkolm Eks, May 19, 1925–February 21, 1965 – also: Malcolm Little, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and Omowale) was a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, and a founder of both the Muslim Mosque, Inc. ...

External link

• "Democratic Debacle" (http://www.americanheritage.com/xml/2004/3/2004_3_feat_0.xml) - American Heritage article