SNCC- The New Abolitionists

by Howard Zinn

  Joseph Rauh and Edith Green now met with the Freedom Democratic Party delegation to urge them to accept the Administration offer. Green and Rauh were clearly shaken and uneasy. They were being pressured by Humphrey, Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, and the hierarchy of the Democratic Party. On the other side, they faced, not only the anger of the SNCC youngsters who had helped organize the FDP, but that of the FDP delegates, for whom this token offer of recognition was too much like the usual bone thrown to Negroes who showed signs of revolt. And perhaps a third pressure was simply their own traditional view that politics is “the art of the possible.”

  But SNCC and the FDP were born in struggles for “the impossible.” The politics of the FDP was not traditional politics, and its members were not politicians. Fannie Lou Hamer spoke out angrily against accepting the compromise, and her fellow delegates went along. On a hand vote, they agreed unanimously to reject the administration offer. With support gone now in the Credentials Committee for a floor fight (only Edith Green seemed willing now to stick it out to the end) Bob Moses urged a sit-in on the convention floor.

  That night, television screens all over the nation showed unprecedented scenes of Mississippi Negroes (who had managed to get passes to the floor from friendly delegates) occupying seats in the Mississippi section in defiance of the whole officialdom of the convention. One was physically ejected by the Sergeant-at-Arms, but the rest linked arms, and supporters surging around managed to get in the way of the police, until orders came to the police to stop the evictions. When the convention session ended, the successful sit-in was celebrated in a giant rally outside, and a snake-dance along the boardwalk.

  At another meeting the next day, Aaron Henry asked his fellow members of the FDP delegation to reconsider their refusal to accept the compromise. Leading figures of the civil rights movement arrived to argue for acceptance: Martin Luther King, James Farmer, Bayard Rustin. But here the difference between SNCC and the other civil rights groups was made clear: SNCC’s was a politics of protest, not of working within the orthodox frame. Its attitude towards compromise was in the spirit of the old abolitionists, of Wendell Phillips. Phillips understood that the eventual outcome of any social struggle was a compromise, but he also understood that in order for that compromise to take place at the highest possible level, the social reformer must maintain his position to the end. “If we would get half a loaf,” he said, “we must demand the whole of it.”

  SNCC was carrying the distinction between the agitator and the politician into politics itself, and the “old-timers” in civil rights and national politics could not understand this agitational politics. The SNCC mood was dominant in the Freedom Democratic Party, not only because SNCC workers were by far the most numerous among all civil rights groups working in Mississippi, but also because SNCC, more than any other organization, remained close to its soil, to the poverty-stricken, rural, black countryside, reflecting the temper of the people living there. When the FDP delegation voted on reconsidering the compromise, the vote was 60–4 against.

  Many liberals all over the country, following the externals of the conflict over television, could not understand why the compromise was rejected. The FDP and SNCC leadership did not succeed in making their position clear. Perhaps the conditions in Atlantic City were too hectic; perhaps they themselves were not sure. After the excitement, they could reflect on the difference between the FDP and the ordinary political party. For one thing, in American politics there is the tendency to judge victory and defeat by keeping score of seats, votes, memberships. A radical protest movement is more concerned with the degree to which the movement has expressed its emotions honestly, regardless of immediate consequences in winning votes and offices. To a great extent, this is because a mass movement recognizes that its “victory” ultimately depends on the way it represents fully and unashamedly the temper of its constituents, and not whether it offends its far-off supporters. The SNCC staff gathered in Washington understood, and the FDP delegates themselves sensed, that their power depended on how true they remained to the grief of the Delta, and not to the politicking in smoke-filled rooms.

  At Atlantic City, the FDP learned most about itself. It had never acknowledged clearly how strong was its disaffection from the regular politics not only of Mississippi but of the nation. During the summer, it had become enthralled with the idea of ousting the regular delegation to the convention by demonstrating its superior loyalty to Lyndon Johnson as against the Mississippi Democrats’ obvious sympathy for Barry Goldwater. This was an inaccurate rendering of the FDP mood, which was not really “loyal” in the traditional political sense to any candidate of the Establishment, whether Democratic or Republican. The FDP became dazzled for a while by its own pre-convention hoopla about “loyalty” to Johnson. Its signs read “All the way with LBJ” when it still felt anger at Johnson’s failure to give protection in Mississippi. The FDP never made sufficiently clear to itself or to the nation that its chief reason for demanding seats at the Convention was not its greater loyalty to the national Democratic Party, but its position as true representative of that 45 per cent of Mississippi’s population which was Negro.

  This confusion was reflected at a COFO staff meeting in Jackson in August, where SNCC people themselves were divided between a majority willing to wage civil disobedience at the convention if the Freedom delegation was not seated, and a minority which suggested “playing the game of politics” so as not to lose too many political friends. It was also reflected in the fact that even Edith Green’s acceptable compromise at the convention was based on the administering of “loyalty” oaths. Confusion was resolved when the administration compromise was offered and the FDP and SNCC people realized suddenly how far they had come along the road to being absorbed in that political mainstream which they had always believed was polluted; at this point they reacted instinctively with an overwhelming “No!”

  In the end, despite what some liberals considered a failure to grasp emblems of success—two seats on the floor—the Freedom Democratic Party came out of its Atlantic City experience both wiser and stronger, split off in an unfortunate way from some liberal supporters like Joe Rauh, but firmer than ever in its ties with the people back home, and ready to organize those people into an even greater fighting force.

  When the election of 1964 was over, and Lyndon Johnson had registered his smashing victory over Goldwater (by a margin so great that his desperation at the Atlantic City convention over the FDP challenges seemed, in retrospect, irrationally intense) the FDP turned to its next step. This was to challenge the seating of the five segregationist Mississippi Congressmen at the opening of Congress in January, 1965.

  The United States Constitution, in Article I, Section 5, provides that the House of Representatives “shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.” In Title 2 of the U.S. Code a legal procedure is outlined by which American citizens may contest an election and present evidence to the House. In accordance with this, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, shortly after the November election, sent to Jamie L. Whitten, who had been “elected” to Congress from the Second Congressional District, a notice of intention to contest his election.

  Mrs. Hamer’s argument was simple and her documentation powerful. Jamie Whitten did not deserve to represent the Second District of Mississippi because Negroes constituted 52.4% of the adult population of that district, yet only 2.97% had been permitted to register to vote, because of a pattern of intimidation, murder, and official restraint. Her challenge contained the statistics in detail for each county, a history of disenfranchisement in Mississippi, and a long list of incidents of violence against Negroes.

  At the same time, challenges were filed in two other Mississippi Congressional Districts by Mrs. Annie Devine, a CORE worker and leader in the Canton Negro community, and Mrs. Victoria Gray, an SCLC voter registration director and a housewife in Hattiesburg. All three women had tried to run in the November elections and were kept off
the ballot. They had run in “Freedom Elections” and polled large votes cast by Negroes in their districts.

  When Congress opened on January 4, 1965, Congressman William Fitts Ryan of New York stood up as the oaths were about to be administered to the new membership, and objected to the seating of all five Congressmen from Mississippi. In an astonishing display of support, fifty Congressmen stood up with him. According to established House procedure, Speaker John McCormick, presiding, then administered the oath to everyone else so that the sworn-in members could decide what to do about those being challenged. Now Ryan rose again, hoping to introduce a motion that the Mississippi delegation not be seated until the House Committee on Administration (which deals with contested elections) could decide whether they were rightful representatives of their districts.

  However, Representative Carl Albert of Oklahoma rose at this point, and Speaker McCormick recognized him. Now the view of the Johnson administration was clear, for Albert and McCormick were the Administration’s spokesmen in the House. Johnson’s weight, exerted on the overwhelmingly Democratic House, could have been used to get a majority for Ryan’s motion to keep the white Mississippians out of their seats until a final decision were made. But Representative Albert’s motion was quite different: to seat the regular Mississippi delegation until the dispute was finally resolved. Despite Johnson’s easy victory at the polls, and despite the evidence in November that the South was no longer solid but split between “liberal” and “conservative” sections, Johnson was evidently still unwilling to ruffle Deep South politicians.

  A test of how many Congressmen were behind William Fitts Ryan and Edith Green came when Mrs. Green asked for a roll-call vote on Albert’s request to close debate on his motion. To open up debate would mean opportunity to air before the House and the nation the whole miserable history of Negro disenfranchisement in Mississippi and thus create an atmosphere which would then make it hard for Northern Congressmen to vote to seat the Mississippi delegation. Congressman James Roosevelt of California, according to a press release from his office, had prepared a speech in the event of such open debate, in which he would say:

  This House must speak upon its honor to the people of the United States. We are beyond politics in the ordinary sense; we are beyond the contentions of party and program that ordinarily concern us. We must speak upon politics in the very highest sense; we must speak upon the way a free people governs itself; we must speak upon the meaning of the words and the spirit of the Constitution, we must speak upon what to an American is the most terrible of political facts—that some Americans are not free men.… We dare not let men pretend to a seat in this honorable House who have been chosen by a closed vote in a closed society. If we do, we betray this House and the people of the United States and the Constitution they wrote for us.

  As a result of the roll-call vote, debate was closed and the House went on to approve Albert’s motion to seat the Mississippi regulars. But in that roll call 149 Congressmen stood with the FDP, not enough to win (the vote was 276 to 149), but far more than anyone had expected. More than their own inner conviction was responsible for such a display of support for the Negro challenge; often, such conviction must be brought out of hiding by demonstrative action. In the days before the opening of Congress, hundreds of FDP people had visited Congressmen to appeal for their support. On opening day, Negroes by the hundreds from Mississippi lined the tunnel leading into the House so that all Congressmen-elect had to file past them as they entered. Mrs. Hamer, Mrs. Devine, and Mrs. Grey tried to enter the House to take the seats they asserted were rightfully theirs. They were barred by the officer at the door. The effect, however, was to bring the issue visibly to Congress and to the nation.

  Though the five Congressmen from Mississippi had been seated, the challenge continued in accordance with the provisions of Title 2. The three challengers had forty days to take testimony to support their challenge; then forty days were granted for argument by the other side, and then ten days for rebuttal, after which the House Committee on Administration was supposed to weigh the evidence and make a decision.

  Thus, the next forty days were historic ones for the state of Mississippi. Armed with the statutory power to subpoena anyone in the state who could throw light on the elections, a hundred volunteer lawyers from all over the country took depositions for the FDP in hearings to bring out the evidence. Registrars and sheriffs were queried pointedly about those kept from voting in their counties. Negroes filled thousands of pages with their accounts of terror, intimidation, and subterfuge in connection with their attempts to register. When it came time for forty days of hearings held by the regular Congressmen, there were none; they had decided simply not to recognize the challenge.

  Sometime in July, 1965 (after all the stages of the challenge had been exhausted in fulfillment of the law’s requirements), the House Committee on Administration would decide what to do about the challenge, and report to the full House of Representatives. And three forces would face one another: the Mississippi regulars, the Freedom Democratic Party, and the Administration. SNCC and the FDP thus prepared once more to confront Congress, the Administration, and the American public with the moral question of whether racism in Mississippi would once again get the tacit support of avowed liberals at the head of the American government.

  What was the Freedom Democratic Party by mid-1965? There were Lawrence Guyot, young philosophy major from Pass Christian, Mississippi, and Fannie Lou Hamer, of Ruleville—both veteran SNCC staff members, as Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the FDP. With them, running from time to time as candidates of the Party in “freedom elections,” were Mississippians who had been active in other organizations: Aaron Henry of Clarksdale, NAACP state chairman; Mrs. Gray of Hattiesburg, with SCLC; and Mrs. Devine of Canton, who had worked for CORE. The research and publicity was being done by a hard-working crew of young people, black and white, some from Mississippi and some from elsewhere, mostly staff members of SNCC. Out in the field, registering people and organizing the party, were young Negroes from the area, and white volunteers, many of whom had come down in the summer and stayed on. And at the base of the party were tens of thousands of Mississippi Negroes (and a handful of whites) who had registered and voted in the “freedom elections.”

  This was a new kind of politics the FDP was engaging in, something that might be called protest politics, because it exerted its force both against and within the traditional politics. Other reform movements in the American past had wrestled with the problem of dealing with an American party system which excluded the underprivileged. Many, trying to work within the frame, had been swallowed up by it: the Locofocos in the Jacksonian Democratic Party; the Populists in the Democratic Party of Bryan; the Progressives, in the parties of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt; the radicals of the thirties, in the cautious experimentalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Others, noting this absorption process, and trying to remain outside, stayed small, and then were assimilated anyway or petered out (as did the Liberty Party in the Republican Party of Lincoln and the Progressives of Henry Wallace). As a result, some radical groups, like the Industrial Workers of the World, had avoided politics altogether.

  The FDP was trying a new synthesis of the old approaches: to register Negroes to vote, while making clear the limitations of the ballot box in eradicating the poverty which lay near the root of race hatred in Mississippi; to demand representation within the Democratic Party while fighting the tokenism of that party and the lack of democracy in the whole American party system: to elect leaders to office, while maintaining a suspicion of all leadership, in the knowledge that power corrupts the best of men and women. The FDP hoped that somehow it could maintain this tension between means and ends by never losing contact with the sources of its moral strength—the sharecroppers and housewives and barefoot children of the Black Belt.

  SNCC itself came out of the summer with certain questions: where now, and what next? Its staff of 150 had grown to over 200; it had a nationa
l reputation as a band of young people in blue overalls who stood in the forefront of the civil rights struggle in the deep South. Through the summer, although its major attention was being concentrated on Mississippi, SNCC had skeleton crews working in Southwest Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas. Everyone knew that the Summer Project of COFO, while including hard-working people in CORE and SCLC, and supported by northern organizations like the National Council of Churches, was being manned largely by SNCC.

  The NAACP had gone its own way pretty much during the summer, and its estrangement from COFO was open, although individual officers of the NAACP, like Aaron Henry, remained prominent in COFO affairs. In April, 1965, the national office of the NAACP announced that it was officially withdrawing from COFO, and Aaron Henry joined in the announcement. Many local NAACP people, nevertheless, would probably continue to work with COFO, as the most effective force in the state. Petty jealousies, rivalry, and conflict over tactics had always existed among the groups in COFO, and continued among SNCC, SCLC, and CORE. During times of crisis, however, they seemed to be able to work together, even in the midst of disagreements.

  Six months after the Summer Project ended, in February and March of 1965, Selma, Alabama, gave evidence both of the organizational frictions and the basic fraternity-in-action between SNCC and Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. SNCC had been working in Selma for two years, with local leaders like Mrs. Amelia Boynton and the Reverend James Bevel of SCLC. When Dr. King came to Selma in February, fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he not only aroused local people to their highest pitch, but brought national and world attention to Selma. Negroes in that town, marching peacefully to the county courthouse seeking to register to vote, were attacked again and again by Sheriff Jim Clark and his club-wielding volunteer posse, or by Colonel Al Lingo’s state troopers. The following incidents took place: