Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
The organization aimed to challenge the established power of the state Mississippi Democratic Party, which then opposed the Civil Rights Movement and only allowed participation by White Americans.
[3] Starting in 1961, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) had implemented campaigns to register black voters.
With this election seen as a protest action to dramatize the denial of their constitutional voting rights, close to 80,000 people cast freedom ballots for an integrated slate of candidates.
[4] In response, James W. Wright, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and Bob Moses,[5] founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964.
As a result, they encountered violent opposition that included activists being intimidated with church, home, and business burnings and bombings, beatings, and arrests.
After it proved to be impossible to register black voters against the opposition of state officials, Freedom Summer volunteers switched to building the MFDP using a simple, alternate process of signing up party supporters.
This new process did not require people to take unfair literacy tests or to register for voting at the courthouse in public opposition to existing power structures.
On August 4, before the state convention, the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were discovered buried in an earthen dam.
Missing for weeks since disappearing after investigating a church burning in June 1964, they were subjects of a massive manhunt that involved the FBI and United States sailors from a nearby base.
We have to deal with them on the basis of knowledge that we gain ... through sending our children through certain kinds of courses, through sitting down and reading at night instead of spending our time at the television and radio just listening to what's on.
[9]In the face of unrelenting violence and economic retaliation by the White Citizens Council, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and other opponents, the MFDP held local caucuses, county assemblies, and a statewide convention (as prescribed by Democratic Party rules) to elect 68 delegates (including four whites) to the 1964 Democratic National Convention scheduled for Atlantic City, New Jersey in August.
[10] Some of the original members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation in 1964 were Lawrence Guyot, Peggy J. Conner, Victoria Gray, Edwin King, Aaron Henry, James W. Wright, Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Bob Moses.
[11] Martin Luther King told President Johnson that he would "do everything in my power to urge (The MFDP) being seated as the only democratically constituted delegation from Mississippi."
The MFDP delegates lobbied and argued their case, and large groups of supporters and volunteers established an around-the-clock picket line on the boardwalk just outside the convention.
The MFDP prepared a legal brief detailing the reasons why the "regular" Mississippi delegation did not adequately represent their state's residents, including the tactics employed to exclude participation by Black citizens.
She gave a moving and evocative portrayal of her hard brutalized life as a sharecropper on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta and the retaliation inflicted on her for trying to register to vote.
President Johnson had wanted a convention stressing unity and feared losing Southern support in the coming campaign against Republican Party candidate Barry Goldwater.
This is typical white man picking black folks' leaders, and that day is just gone.The MFDP was willing to accept a compromise proposed by Oregon Congresswoman Edith Green, that "loyal" Democrats of both delegations be seated.
It is our belief that the separation of the races is necessary for the peace and tranquility of all the people of Mississippi and the continuing good relationship which has existed over the years ...[16]The MFDP left the Convention rather than be compromised by accepting the two seats.
After the United States heard her speech, different parts of the population were outraged and began calling into the White House seeking justice for African Americans in the South.
The next day the MFDP delegates returned to discover that convention organizers had removed the empty seats; they stayed to sing freedom songs.
The movement had been promised that if it concentrated on voter registration rather than protests, it would be supported by the federal government and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
[20]Though the MFDP failed to unseat the regulars at the convention, they did succeed in publicizing the violence and injustice by which the white power structure governed Mississippi and disenfranchised black citizens.
The MFDP actions resulted in the national party adopting a new policy: its credentials committee banned seating delegations that had been chosen through racial discrimination.
