Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party/Freedom Democratic Party | |
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Chairperson | Politics of Mississippi |
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), also referred to simply as the Freedom Democratic Party, was an American
Origins
In Mississippi African Americans were persuaded away from registering and voting by means of
In June 1963, African Americans attempted to cast votes in the Mississippi primary election but were prevented from doing so. This contest to determine Democratic candidates was essentially the only competitive race, as the state was a de facto one-party jurisdiction under the control of the
Building the party
With partial participation in the regular Mississippi Democratic Party blocked by segregationists, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) built on the success of the Freedom Ballot by formally establishing the MFDP in April 1964 as a non-discriminatory, non-exclusionary rival to the regular party organization. The MFDP hoped to replace the regulars as the officially recognized Democratic Party organization in Mississippi by winning the Mississippi seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention for a slate of delegates elected by some black and white Mississippians.
Building the MFDP was a major thrust of the Freedom Summer project. 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 that did not require blacks to openly defy the power structure by trying to register at the courthouse or for blacks and poor whites to take a complex and unfair literacy test.
By the end of August 1964 the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had gained so much attention nationally that its delegates had 80,000 members belonging to their racially integrated party.
In time some activists from the Northeast, including some of the Freedom Riders, would come to dominate the administration of the new party.
State Convention in Jackson, Mississippi
On August 4, before the state convention, the bodies of
On August 6, 1964, the MFDP held a statewide convention before attending the DNC; 2,500 people showed up at the
Ella Baker was the keynote speaker at the state convention. She did not deliver the kind of address that the people were expecting on voting and rights but made a statement about society:
I'm not trying to make you feel good. We have to know what we are dealing with and we can't deal with things just because we feel we ought to have our rights. 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. But we must spend our time reading some of things that help us to understand this South we live in.[8]
The state convention gave the MFDP confidence in their ability to effect change on the national level. They elected Fannie Lou Hamer, E.W. Steptoe, Winson Hudson, Hazel Palmer,
Those are the people who don't care. ... That includes the President on down to the governor of the state of Mississippi ... I blame the people in Washington D.C., and on down in the state of Mississippi for what happened just as much as I blame those who pulled the trigger. ... He's got his freedom, and we're still fighting for ours.[9]
In the face of unrelenting violence and economic retaliation by the
1964 Democratic National Convention
The MFDP sent its elected delegates by bus to the convention. They challenged the right of the Mississippi Democratic Party's delegation to participate in the convention, claiming that the regulars had been illegally elected in a completely segregated process that violated both party regulations and federal law, and that the regulars had no intention to support President Lyndon B. Johnson, the party's candidate, in the November election. They asked that the MFDP delegates be seated rather than the segregationist regulars.[10]
Some of the original members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation in 1964 were
Dr.
The Democratic Party referred the challenge to the convention credentials committee. 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. Jack Minnis wrote, "MFDP, with the help of SNCC, produced brochures, mimeographed biographies of the MFDP delegates, histories of the MFDP, legal arguments, historical arguments, moral arguments" that were distributed to all of the convention's delegates.[13] Their actions attracted considerable publicity.
The credentials committee televised its proceedings, which allowed the nation to see and hear the testimony of the MFDP delegates, particularly the testimony of
After that, most knowledgeable observers[
With the help of Senator
MFDP leader and Mississippi NAACP President Aaron Henry stated:
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
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.
The MFDP was willing to accept a compromise proposed by Oregon Congresswoman Edith Green, that "loyal" Democrats of both delegations be seated. This compromise was not accepted by the national party, which instead selected the "regular" party to represent the state of Mississippi, those who, on July 28, 1964, had passed the following resolution:[15]
We opposed, condemn and deplore the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ... We believe in separation of the races in all phases of our society. 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. President Johnson had tried to prevent Fannie Lou Hamer from making her speech. 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 year President Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which authorized the federal government to oversee elections at the state and local level, and enforce practices that would support legitimate voter registration and voting in areas with an historic under-representation of certain parts of the population.[17]
Fannie Lou Hamer said, "We didn't come all this way for no two seats, 'cause all of us is tired."[18] Although denied official recognition, the MFDP kept up their agitation within the convention. When all but three of the regular Mississippi delegates left because they refused to support Johnson against Goldwater, the Republican Party candidate, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic northern delegates and took the vacated seats. The national Party would not allow them to stay. The next day the MFDP delegates returned to discover that convention organizers had removed the empty seats; they stayed to sing freedom songs.
Johnson lost Mississippi in the 1964 presidential election, as whites had still suppressed the black vote. White Democrats were becoming more conservative and voted for Goldwater. With the exception of the 1976 presidential election, when favorite son Jimmy Carter of Georgia was the Democratic candidate, Mississippi has never voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since.
Aftermath
The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP. For a while, it became more radical after Atlantic City. It invited Malcolm X to speak and opposed the war in Vietnam.
For the better part of a year after hosting the statewide mock election in November 1963, most of the organization's efforts went into challenging the seating of the elected congresspersons of Mississippi to the U.S. House of Representatives. They argued to Congress that, because of the state's disfranchisement, half of the electorate was prevented from participating in the election of those representatives. The FDP had 149 votes in Congress supporting its position; however, the House leadership (dominated by senior Southern Democrats) and Johnson's White House were appalled at this idea and rejected overturning the Democratic representatives from Mississippi.[19][page needed]
Many Civil Rights Movement activists felt betrayed by Johnson, Humphrey, and the liberal establishment. 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. Instead, at the decisive moment, they believed that black civil rights and justice had been sacrificed for the political interests of white politicians. As SNCC Chairman John Lewis later wrote:
As far as I'm concerned, this was the turning point of the civil rights movement. I'm absolutely convinced of that. Until then, despite every setback and disappointment and obstacle we had faced over the years, the belief still prevailed that the system would work, the system would listen, the system would respond. Now, for the first time, we had made our way to the very center of the system. We had played by the rules, done everything we were supposed to do, had played the game exactly as required, had arrived at the doorstep and found the door slammed in our face.[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 dramatic elements of the MFDP and its convention challenge eventually helped gain congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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.[21] The MFDP continued as an alternate for several years as African Americans began to register and vote in the regular political system. Many of the people associated with it continued to press to implement civil rights in Mississippi. After passage of the Voting Rights Act, the number of registered black voters in Mississippi grew dramatically. The regular party stopped discriminating against blacks and agreed to conform to the Democratic Party rules guaranteeing fair participation. Eventually, the MFDP merged into the regular party and many MFDP activists became party leaders. The FDP has only one active chapter, in Holmes County.
After the MFDP was disbanded, many formed a new party, the Loyal Democrats of Mississippi. In 1968, they were successful at the DNC in being seated as the only delegation from Mississippi. Several of these delegates were members of the MFDP.[12]
Militants, including John Buffington (S. N. C. C. (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) field worker in Clay County, chairman of the Clay County Community Development Organization and member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party) and Rudy A. Shields (S. N. C. C. (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) field worker in Copiah County), challenged the white Mississippi power structure, economically and electorally. They were charged with the firebombing of the office of the Clay County Community Development Organization on 24 January 1970. The next day, dynamite exploded the Clay County Courthouse. A grand jury declined to indict them. Several months later, one of the militants, John Thomas, Jr., was assassinated, in broad daylight, and the accused killer was found not guilty, claiming self-defense.[22]
See also
References
- ^ "MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention" (PDF). Civil Rights Movement History 1951-1968.
- ISBN 978-0-8131-4094-0.
- ISBN 978-0-8061-8530-9.
- ^ Freedom Ballot in MS ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive
- ISBN 978-1-4408-4007-4.
- ISBN 978-1-107-10339-9.
- ^ Williams, Juan (1987). Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. Viking.
- ISBN 9780252021022.
- ISBN 9780252021022.
- ^ The Mississippi Movement & the MFDP ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive
- ISBN 9780252021022.
- ^ a b "Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)". King Encyclopedia. Stanford University | Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Retrieved 9 September 2014.
- ^ Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 90.
- ISBN 9780684808192.
- ^ Carmichael and Hamilton p.92.
- ^ Carmichael and Hamilton p.93.
- ^ Williams, Junius (11 August 2004). "Fannie Lou Hamer and the Democratic Convention". The New York Amsterdam News. New York, NY.
- ^ Mills, Kay, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, (New York: Plume, 1994), p. 5.
- I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. University of California.
- ISBN 9780684810652.
- ^ Payne, Charles (2007). I've Got the Light of Freedom: The organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. University of California.
- ^ "MISSISSIPPI WHITE CLEARED IN KILLING". The New York Times. October 12, 1971 – via NYTimes.com.
Further reading
- Hamer, Fannie Lou, The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It Is The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell it Like it is'], Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2011. ISBN 9781604738230.
External links
- SNCC Digital Gateway: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Founded Digital documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
- Civil Rights Movement Archive
- "Democratic Debacle" - American Heritage article
- "Civil Rights Betrayed" - International Socialist Review article on the 40th anniversary of the MFDP
- MFDP/COFO Documents Online collection of original MFDP/COFO documents ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive.