The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the 1964 challenge

Why did Mississippi need a second Democratic Party?

In 1964 the Democratic Party in Mississippi was an all-white organization that chose its convention delegates at precinct meetings Black residents were kept out of, and it opposed the national party's civil rights platform. In the South of that time, winning the Democratic primary meant winning office, so exclusion from the party meant exclusion from government. The regular state party had passed a resolution that July opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Freedom Vote of November 1963, a mock election in which about 80,000 Black Mississippians cast ballots for an integrated slate headed by Aaron Henry, had shown that people would vote if they could. The MFDP turned that energy into a party.

How was the party organized?

The MFDP was formally set up in April 1964 and held its own precinct, county and district meetings that summer, open to anyone, ending in a state convention in Jackson on August 6, 1964. About 2,500 people attended, and Ella Baker gave the keynote. The convention chose 68 delegates and alternates for Atlantic City, four of them white. Lawrence Guyot was chosen as chair, Fannie Lou Hamer as vice chair, and Aaron Henry led the delegation.

The party also ran its own candidates. Hamer, Annie Devine and Victoria Gray sought congressional and Senate seats, and Gray ran for the U.S. Senate against John Stennis. Their names were not allowed on the official November ballot, so the MFDP held a parallel Freedom Election.

What happened in Atlantic City?

The MFDP asked the Credentials Committee to seat its delegates instead of the regular delegation, and on August 22, 1964, Hamer gave the testimony that made the challenge front-page news. Our page on the testimony explains it in detail. The MFDP needed the support of eleven committee members to bring a minority report to the full convention floor and of eight state delegations to force a roll call, and at first it seemed close.

President Lyndon Johnson, worried about losing white Southern voters, pressed delegates to oppose the challenge. Senator Hubert Humphrey, who hoped to be Johnson's running mate, and Minnesota attorney general Walter Mondale worked out the compromise: the regulars would be seated if they signed a loyalty pledge, Aaron Henry and Ed King would be given two at-large seats, and the party would ban discriminatory delegations from 1968.

Why did the MFDP refuse the compromise?

Most members believed that accepting two seats chosen by the national party, while the segregationist delegation kept its place, would mean accepting second-class status. Some allies, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin, urged acceptance as a step forward. Hamer, Devine and most delegates disagreed. Hamer said they had not come all that way for no two seats.

Most of the regular delegates walked out rather than sign the loyalty pledge. MFDP delegates, using passes borrowed from sympathetic delegates, went onto the floor and sat in the empty Mississippi seats until convention staff removed the chairs.

What did the challenge achieve?

It failed in 1964 but changed the party: the promise to bar discriminatory delegations was kept in 1968, when an integrated Mississippi delegation replaced the regulars in Chicago. It also convinced many SNCC workers that working through the national Democratic Party had limits, a lesson that pushed the organization in new directions. The MFDP's next step was to challenge the Mississippi congressmen themselves, the subject of our page on the 1965 Congressional Challenge. The 1968 convention is on its own page.