Her 1964 testimony to the Credentials Committee, explained

What was the Credentials Committee hearing about?

The hearing decided which of two Mississippi delegations would sit at the 1964 Democratic National Convention: the all-white regular party delegation or the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP had been formed that spring because Black Mississippians were shut out of the regular party's precinct meetings and could rarely register to vote. It chose 68 delegates at a state convention in early August and argued that it, and not the regulars, was loyal to the national party and its platform.

The Credentials Committee was the body that settled such disputes before the full convention met. The MFDP's lawyer, Joseph Rauh, arranged a series of witnesses for the afternoon of Saturday, August 22. Hamer was one of them, along with Aaron Henry, the Reverend Ed King, Rita Schwerner, whose husband Michael had been murdered in Neshoba County that June, and Martin Luther King Jr.

What did Fannie Lou Hamer say?

She told the committee, in order, what had happened to her since she tried to register in 1962. She opened by giving her name and her address on East Lafayette Street in Ruleville, and by naming Senator James O. Eastland and Senator John Stennis as the men who represented her county in Washington.

She then described the bus trip to the Indianola courthouse on August 31, 1962, the literacy test, the arrest of the bus driver on the way home, and the plantation owner's demand that she withdraw her application or leave. She said she left that night. She described the shots fired into the house where she had been staying in Ruleville.

The longest part was Winona. She told the committee how, in June 1963, she and other activists returning from a voter education workshop were arrested at the bus station, how she heard others being beaten in nearby cells, and how two Black prisoners were ordered to beat her with a blackjack while officers watched. She described trying to pull down her dress as it rose during the beating.

She closed by saying that if the Freedom Democrats were not seated, she questioned America, and asked whether this was the land of the free and the home of the brave, when people who tried to register were threatened daily.

Why did President Johnson interrupt?

Lyndon Johnson, who wanted a calm convention and the votes of white Southern Democrats in November, called a press conference at the White House while Hamer was speaking, and the live broadcasts switched to him. The SNCC Digital Gateway describes it as an attempt to divert national attention. It did not work for long. That evening many networks aired her testimony in full.

What happened after the testimony?

Party leaders, working for Johnson through Senator Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, offered the MFDP two at-large seats while seating the regular delegation; the MFDP refused. The two seats would have gone to Aaron Henry and Ed King, chosen by the national party rather than by the MFDP. The party also promised that future delegations chosen through racial discrimination would not be seated.

Hamer argued against accepting, saying the delegation had not come all that way for two seats. Most of the regular Mississippi delegates left the convention rather than sign a loyalty pledge, and some MFDP members sat in the empty seats on borrowed passes until the seats were removed. See our page on the MFDP and the 1964 challenge for the full sequence.

Why is the testimony still studied?

It is one of the clearest first-person accounts of voter suppression and police violence ever given before a national political body, and it was heard live on television. Teachers use it because it is short, plain and specific: dates, places and names that students can check against other records. Our lesson plan is built around a close reading of it.

In August 2024, sixty years later, a Mississippi Freedom Trail marker honoring Hamer was unveiled on the Atlantic City boardwalk near the hall where the convention met. It was the first marker on the trail placed outside Mississippi.