At 9:30 a.m. on the Friday before the Democratic National Convention, two busloads of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates and Summer Project volunteers arrived at the Gem Hotel in Atlantic City. The thirty-six hour bus trip from Jackson was the first time many of the delegates had been outside the borders of their native state.
Washington attorney Joseph Rauh, Jr. Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, and James Farmer were also in Atlantic City that Friday. All five northern civil rights leaders were working as advisors to Aaron Henry, chairman of the MFDP delegation, and Bob Moses, director of the COFO Summer Project.
Hopes for the success of the convention challenge immediately united the delegation and its advisors. But less than a week later the Mississippians had repudiated their Northern friends and the "great victory" the delegation had won. By the end of the convention the leadership of the Freedom Party had polarized, split, and finally came under Moses' firm control. The following is the story of how--and why--that split developed.
Friday, August 21: Despite a State Court injunction barring their departure from Mississippi, the MFDP delegates arrive in Atlantic City. Rauh, after telling the press, "What a great sight it was to see that delegation getting off that bus," carefully outlines his strategy to the Freedom Democrats. He will ask the Credentials Committee, of which he is a member, to give the Freedom Party at least equal treatment with the "traditional" party.
If this fails, he will issue a minority report recommending that both delegations be seated and the vote split. He will take this compromise before the convention for a floor fight. He needs eleven Credentials Committee members to sign a minority report and eight state delegations to support a roll-call vote.
The MFDP delegates are inspired by Rauh's "nothing less than equality" slogan. "All the Freedom Party needs," shouts Rauh from the street before the Gem, "is the benevolent neutrality of the President in allowing the convention to decide the issue for itself."
In Washington, Johnson seems far more concered with achieving harmony than allowing freedom of decision at the convention. His strategy is to offer a compromise which will minimize the chance of a Southern walkout while maximizing liberal support in the coming election. Above all, he wants to keep he fight off the floor.
Moratorium Endangered
Johnson has deployed Senators Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, top contenders for the vice-presidential nomination, to assess Freedom Party support in the North and West. He has already conferred with Wilkins and King, partners in the President's moratorium on demonstrations, and been told that if the Freedom delegation is not seated that moratorium may be impossible to enforce.
Arriving in Atlantic City, Governor Carl Sanders announces that Georgia has given "no serious thought" to bolting the convention. Only Louisiana looks likely to follow a Mississippi walk-out.
The MFDP now intensifies its criticism of Johnson's obstinacy: The states threatening to bolt the convention if the regular party is unseated are already lost to Goldwater. And Johnson may lose the liberal vote if the MFDP is not seated.
Friday afternoon the administration makes public what the MFDP immediately christens the "Back-of-the-Bus" Proposal: 1) seating as voting delegates those members of the traditional party who promise to support the national ticket; 2) seating the Freedom delegates as "honored guests."
Rauh Optimistic
The Freedom Party caucuses in the Union Baptist Church. The delegates vote unanimously to reject the compromise. They insist the regular Mississippi delegation will use the loyalty oath as a superficial shield for its Goldwaterism.
Rauh tells the delegation he is "confident of having eleven or more people to sign a minority report if one is necessary." He concludes with an appeal to the press to demand that the Credentials Committee hearings be moved from is present room--too small to allow news coverage--to the ballroom in Convention Hall. Rauh is trying to foil Johnson's efforts to smother the challenge.
