The delegation is completely open to Rauh's suggestions. His optimism is infectious. Moreover, the Mississippians, accustomed to suffering for their cause, are sympathetic to Rauh's fight against administrative pressure.
Until now there has been no necessity for the delegation to make any difficult decisions. Thus no real leader has emerged. The delegates are following Rauh through the legal technicalities of the challenge. Henry, as chairman, has the job of keeping order in the delegation. He is not expected to make decisions.
Saturday August 22: Rauh wins his first battle: The Credentials Committee hearings are moved to the ballroom. The Freedom delegates, after lining up outside Convention Hall and singing freedom songs before a crowd of 500 puzzled on-lookers, are permitted to enter the hearings. Henry, wearing a large LBJ button, repeatedly tells the press, "Even if we lose, we are going back to Mississippi to work for Johnson."
This is the first time the MFDP has appealed its case outside Mississippi. Now Rauh brings the challenge before a nation-wide television audience. He relies primarily on Henry and Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer's tales of persecution to show that the MFDP is the "loyal, legal, and long-suffering party from Mississippi." To charges that the Party has no legal basis, Rauh replies: "The Negro has been kept out of the Mississippi Democratic Party by terror. I want the nation to know this terror."
That night Wilkins, King, Rauh, Moses, and Henry meet with sympathetic members of the Credentials Committee in the delegates' lounge behind the ballroom. After the highly emotional afternoon session, many Committee members are demanding that the traditional party be thrown out and the MFDP seated. Rauh argues that this is politically unsound. But he accepts a proposal by Rep. Edith Green of Oregon that the minority report specify that a loyalty oath be administered to both delegations.
Switch in Tactics
Rauh has switched his tactics. Convinced that the administration will not offer a new compromise, he is underplaying the legal argument and making a moral appeal for mass support in a floor fight.
Sunday, August 23: This is a day of background activity. The Credentials Committee reaches agreement on the Alabama seating dispute but postpones consideration of the Mississippi question until Monday.
The District of Columbia, New York, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado, Guam, and the Virgin Islands have promised they will ask for a roll-call. But pressure from the administration is increasing hourly, and the support of the smaller states and the territories must be considered uncertain.
Police Unobtrusive
Martin Luther King addresses the delegates Sunday evening at the church. "It is better to take a great moral stand, which in the final analysis will prove politically sound," he tells the group.
Monday, August 24: At midnight a group of 100 students marches to the Boardwalk to begin a 98-hour silent vigil before Convention Hall. One Bible-reading delegate from Arizona joins. To the surprise of the students, many recently returned from Mississippi, the police are unobtrusive.
The Credentials Committee meets in the afternoon, adjourning at 6 p.m. to announce it is still deadlocked. But the MFDP's legal position is weakening, for the Credentials Committee has decided that a legal party is one which has complied with the law of the state from which it comes. Still, the Freedom delegation has attracted a hard core of supporters, who are determined to bring the issue to the floor if the administration refuses to change its position.
Monday night the Freedom delegates attend the convention session as guests. They behave like normal delegates--becoming bored and leaving early. A single Freedom delegate reaches the floor and spends the evening in the empty Mississippi seats. "No one," he explains, "even noticed."
Reports from Rauh indicate that the deliberations are becoming increasingly bitter. Henry expresses the growing tedium--and helplessness--of the delegates: "We don't know how to deal with a mind like Johnson's. He is playing a kind of ego, self-preservation politics that folks like us don't understand."
