Having introduced Fred to sex, Freedom Summer had also taught him to handle Mississippi cops. When an Indianola volunteer was arrested, Fred made three quick calls and had the man bailed out within the hour. “Standard Operating Procedure,” he wrote his father. And for the first time all summer, Fred could laugh at Mississippi. One day toward the end of August, he played a little joke on Indianola. A COFO lawyer, hoping to challenge the state ban on leafleting, needed evidence of a permit unjustly denied by the city. Leaflets for mass meetings were usually approved. What event was certain to be turned down? Handwritten fliers were quickly mimeographed:COME ONE, COME ALL
To the
“FREEDOM HOP”
Indianola’s First Integrated Dance
Big Mixer at the Freedom School
Let’s see all you Southern Guys and Gals . . .
With leaflets in hand, Fred went before the city council. Angry councilmen glared down COFO’s spokesman, who could not say a word. Finally a councilman barked, “What’s this all about?” Fred stood and, without cracking a smile, explained that an integrated dance “would be good for the community, would get everybody together.” Faces reddened. Men muttered—“asking for trouble, just asking for trouble.” A calmer official called an executive session, where the permit was refused. Indianola never held its integrated Freedom Hop, but the law on leafleting was eventually overturned.
On the afternoon Fannie Lou Hamer spoke in Atlantic City, Fred and several others crowded around Mrs. Magruder’s black-and-white TV. Like many volunteers, Fred had heard Hamer tell her story. “We all knew that if she told it on national TV, it would really hit the fan.” She was due to speak . . . due to speak . . . She was speaking—on TV!—telling America about being ordered to withdraw her registration, of telling her boss, “I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.” Hamer’s voice was strengthening now. “I had to leave that same night.” She sat, arms bulging from her flowered dress, hands folded. At committee tables, members leaned forward, all eyes focused on her.
On the tenth of September 1962, six-teen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker—for me. That same night two girls were shot—in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also, Mr. Joe McDonald’s house was shot in. And June the ninth, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi . . .
Suddenly the networks cut in: “We will return to this scene in Atlantic City but now we switch to the White House.”
Suddenly, on all three networks, the president was preempting the sharecropper. “On this day nine months ago,” LBJ began, “at very nearly this same hour in the afternoon, the duties of this office were thrust upon me by a terrible moment in our nation’s history.” Johnson, knowing he had to talk for ten or more minutes to forestall Fannie Lou Hamer, went on to discuss—nothing. He told reporters he had not chosen a running mate. He explained, in painstaking detail, his criteria. By the time he finished, so had Hamer. Testimony continued. Rita Schwerner told of Governor Paul Johnson slamming the door in her face. CORE’s James Farmer and the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins backed the challenge. Martin Luther King said any political party should be proud to seat the Freedom Democrats, “for it is in these saints in ordinary walks of life that the true spirit of democracy finds its most proud and abiding expression.” Mississippi then had its hour. A state senator denied any discrimination and denounced Freedom Democrats as “power-hungry soreheads,” their “rump group” rife with Communists and as secretive as the Klan. Rauh’s rebuttal offered the Credentials Committee a choice—to “vote for the power structure of Mississippi that is responsible for the death of those three boys, or . . . vote for the people for whom those three boys gave their lives.” Committee members stood and applauded. The meeting was over. But had it “moved heaven and earth” ? Or even America?
As Lyndon Johnson had planned, his impromptu press conference had taken Fannie Lou Hamer off the air. But not even the president could silence her. That evening, all three networks, before audiences much larger than the afternoon’s, replayed her speech in full. Now Americans saw the stout woman, her head shaking, her voice rippling with emotion.
. . . I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams. I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, “Can you say, ‘Yes, sir,’ nigger? ”
Now the same booming voice that had filled so many cramped churches in Mississippi filled living rooms across America.
. . . And he said, “We’re going to make you wish you was dead.” I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The state highway patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack. The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the state highway patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face. And I laid on my face, the first Negro began to beat me . . .
Some parents, shocked, must have switched channels, but others saw Hamer reach deep within herself.
. . . And I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old. After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the state highway patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack. The second Negro began to beat . . .
The tears came, welling up but not softening her speech. Now she rose to righteous indignation and leveled her accusation at the entire nation:All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated—NOW—I question America. Is this America? The land of the free and the home of the brave? Where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily. Because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
If she had not been brimming with rage, Fannie Lou Hamer might have repeated her signature phrase. “Is this America?” “Is this America where . . .?” “Is this America?” But with her voice wavering, she said a simple “Thank you,” stood, took her handbag, and walked off the mountaintop.
Within minutes, telegrams flooded the White House. More than four hundred were received that evening, all but one demanding the Freedom Democrats be seated. NOW. Suddenly it seemed the Freedom Democrats were everywhere in Atlantic City—their challenge dominating all discussion, their supporters keyholing delegates, phoning from motel rooms, lobbying into the night. By Sunday morning, Joseph Rauh could count higher than “eleven and eight.” Seventeen Credentials Committee members supported the challenge, and ten state delegations were ready to call for a floor vote. Even Bob Moses was optimistic. Standing in shirt and tie before a crowd on the Boardwalk, he announced, “I don’t think that if this issue gets to the floor of this convention that they can possibly turn them down.” Reporters interviewed sharecroppers and maids. Two thousand supporters massed on the Boardwalk that afternoon. When Oregon congressman Wayne Morse told the crowd that his delegation had voted 20-0 to take the challenge to the floor, cheers erupted. Above the sounds of seagulls, of barkers selling frying pans and radios blaring Beatles hits, Fannie Lou Hamer belted out “This Little Light of Mine.”
The Credentials Committee met again that Sunday afternoon, promising a decision by 6:00 p.m. They had three options. All Freedom Democrats might be seated in lieu of the white delegation. None might be seated—they were not a legal party, after all. Or both delegations, if willing to sign loyalty oaths to support LBJ, could be seated, each delegate given half a vote. As a Freedom Democrat handout noted, this 50/50 solution had settled several previous convention disputes, including one in 1944 when Congressman Lyndon Johnson had led a pro-FDR challenge to a conservative Texas delegation.
/> But warned that the entire South would walk out, President Lyndon Johnson wanted no such solution. His plan was to seat Freedom Democrats as “honored guests,” with no voting privileges. Freedom Democrats were dead set against such a “back of the bus” treatment. After voting down the 50/50 split, the Credentials Committee was deadlocked. Then an Oregon congressman offered a fourth plan. Two Freedom Democrats could be seated “at large.” Joseph Rauh’s heart sank “because he was on our side, and here our side was reducing its demand to two before the fight had started.” No vote was taken on the two-seat compromise. A subcommittee, chaired by Minnesota attorney general Walter Mondale, continued the discussion into the evening. At 8:45 p.m., a bomb threat was phoned to the SNCC/CORE office. Sometime that evening, a call to the White House told the president that the Freedom Democrats definitely had enough support for a floor vote. “Tell Rauh if he plans to play with us in this administration,” the president said, “he better not let that get out on the floor.”
Born and raised in Mississippi, the Freedom Democrats had few illusions about democracy. They knew how far power would go to protect its pecking order. Though still testing democracy’s breadth, they knew all too well its depths. Moderation, ethics, principles—these were for stable times, when blacks in Mississippi “knew their place.” But they were not in Mississippi anymore. They had bused a thousand miles to put its horrors behind them. Here at a higher level of power, nearly every Freedom Democrat thought that this time, democracy might live up to its name. The lessons would come quickly.
That weekend, FBI agents broke into the SNCC/CORE office on Atlantic Avenue, a block from the convention hall. The agents had just come from tapping Martin Luther King’s hotel phone. It took them just a few minutes to wiretap phones used by Freedom Democrats. The surveillance had been ordered by the president himself. J. Edgar Hoover considered wiretapping one’s own party convention “way out of line” but still sent twenty-seven agents and his special assistant. Information from the wiretaps, fed hourly to the Oval Office, paid off immediately. By Sunday night, Lyndon Johnson knew which delegates Freedom Democrats were lobbying and which governors Martin Luther King was pushing to lead a floor fight. And thanks to a list Bob Moses had reluctantly given a black congressman, LBJ knew which Credentials Committee members backed the challenge. Now the pressure tightened. Calls went out across America. Judgeships and appointments, loans and promotions still in the making would suddenly vanish if the men and women on that list did not turn their backs on Freedom Democrats. Joseph Rauh kept counting, but to his dismay, he found he had just eleven supporters. Then ten. Then eight.
On Monday, the day the convention was to begin, FBI agents went undercover as NBC reporters. Black informers infiltrated the SNCC/CORE office, and more wiretaps bugged the motel rooms of farmers and sharecroppers, barbers and undertakers, maids and cooks. SNCC was unaware of the surveillance. Other power plays would be more transparent.
Chris Williams was neither a delegate nor an official Freedom Democrat, but he had come to Atlantic City to help in any way he could. He had spent the weekend chauffeuring Freedom Democrats, and singing in boisterous meetings at the Union Temple Baptist Church. Though relieved to be out of the blast furnace, he did not even have time to jump in the ocean. There was always another delegate to drive, another meeting to attend. Chris felt frustrated by his limited role, but on Monday morning his restless energy found a focal point.
When dawn broke on August 24, 150 people, some in overalls, some in suits, sat on the Boardwalk outside the convention hall. Most were silent. Many held signs:SUPPORT THE FREEDOM DEMOCRATS
1964, NOT 1864
STOP HYPOCRISY, START DEMOCRACY
Above the seated crowd, three picket signs bore sketches of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Holding the sign with the picture of his beloved brother stood little Ben Chaney. And alongside the crowd, as if in a museum, Mississippi democracy was on display. A 1950s sedan, gutted and blackened, sat on the trailer that had trucked it from Mississippi to represent the burned Ford wagon. Photos showed sharecroppers’ destitution. The charred bell from the Mt. Zion Church lay in the bed of a pickup labeled “Mississippi Terror Truck.” The Boardwalk sit-in continued all that Monday, growing to include hundreds of people. Vacationers strolled past, turning their heads. A few stopped to talk. “Don’t you understand? ” one couple was told. “You must try. People have died behind the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the least we can do is support them here.” Most walked on, but a few brought food to the vigil—apples, hot dogs, or saltwater taffy.
While the protest continued, LBJ’s fears mounted. “Alabama’s done gone,” he told a friend, “and they tell me that Louisiana and Arkansas are going with them. And I’m afraid it’s going to spread to eight or ten.” With the Credentials Committee promising a decision before Monday evening’s opening gavel, attention shifted to the Pageant Hotel. Located opposite the convention hall, with a towering Miss America crown atop its white facade, the Pageant had become “Atlantic City’s White House.” White House aides and the president’s teenage daughter were spotted in its lobby. Calls from the Oval Office poured into the switchboard. And the likely vice presidential candidate, Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey, rushed in and out of the elevator. The balding, ebullient Humphrey had a job more weighty than any he might assume as vice president. LBJ had ordered him to handle the Freedom Democrats. The prize dangled before him was the vice presidency. “You better talk to Hubert Humphrey,” Johnson told a friend, “because I’m telling you he’s got no future in this party at all if this big war comes off here and the South all walks out and we all get in a helluva mess.”
At 1:40 p.m. on Monday, Humphrey convened a meeting in his suite at the Pageant. To back his plea that Freedom Democrats accept the two-seat compromise, Humphrey had invited several members of the Credentials Committee and a handful of moderate black leaders—Martin Luther King and his assistant, Andrew Young, plus CORE’s James Farmer, and Aaron Henry. But Henry brought two friends, uninvited—Bob Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer. The scene was a study in black and white—black and white faces, black ties and white shirts, black resentment and white rationalization. Arguing from one corner of the suite to the other, the leaders kept at it for three hours. When the compromise came up, Moses softly stated that it was time “for Negroes to speak for Negroes, for Negroes to represent Negroes.” Freedom Democrats, he said, “can accept no less than equal votes at the convention.” Hubert Humphrey fought back. If whites could not also represent Negroes, he said, “Then democracy is not real.” He then reminded everyone in the room of his stellar record on civil rights. (In 1948, Humphrey had spearheaded the most liberal civil rights platform in American history, proclaiming, “The time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” Humphrey later single-handedly integrated the dining room of the U.S. Senate by inviting a black aide to lunch and refusing to leave.) Humphrey concluded by noting that his vice presidential nomination hinged on the compromise.
In one corner of the suite, Fannie Lou Hamer listened in silence. Before coming to Atlantic City, Hamer had heard about Humphrey’s civil rights record and had looked forward to meeting him. Now she struggled to see the heart of a good Samaritan behind the smile of a politician. “Senator Humphrey,” she said, “I’ve been praying about you and you’re a good man, and you know what’s right. The trouble is you’re afraid to do what you know is right. You just want this job. . . . But Mr. Humphrey, if you take this job, you won’t be worth anything. Mr. Humphrey, I’m going to pray for you again.” Hamer had tears in her eyes. Some said Humphrey also cried. The meeting broke up after another hour. That afternoon, the Credentials Committee postponed its decision until Tuesday. Joseph Rauh, talking to reporters, hid his sinking sense of betrayal. “We can win on the floor and we’ll take it all the way,” he said. The convention began that night with rows of empty seats wr
apped in ribbons labeled “Mississippi.” Walter Mondale’s subcommittee argued until dawn.
By Tuesday morning, Lyndon Johnson had descended into despair. An aide had called to relay Humphrey’s report from Monday’s meeting. He had walked “into the lion’s den,” Humphrey said. He had “listened patiently . . . argued fervently . . . used all the heartstrings that I had, and I made no headway.” Watching the convention’s opening night, Johnson had heard the most widely watched newsmen in America, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, warn of a floor fight or even a full southern walkout. Telegrams to the White House were now complaining “that the Negroes have taken over the country.” Feeling caught in a racial crossfire, losing control of his convention, Johnson began to contemplate his most drastic option—quitting. He had steamrolled the Civil Rights Act into law, only to watch urban ghettos erupt. He had defied southern segregationists, only to see this ragtag band from Mississippi poised to tear his party apart. “The Freedom Party,” Johnson told a friend, “has control of the convention.” Their challenge was just “an excuse to say I turned on the Negro.” Convinced that his old nemesis, Robert Kennedy, had masterminded the whole affair to embarrass him, Johnson denounced the challenge as “Bobby’s trap.” As his mood darkened, Johnson felt he had no choice. He would finish his term and go home to Texas.
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