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.
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."
Tuesday, August 25: Through the night, Rauh confers with Humphrey. Rauh later tells the delegates that three people have argued with Johnson--one as recently as 6 a.m.--but that the President will not change his stand. Humphrey indicates that if the compromise fails and a floor fight ensues he will lose the vice-presidency.
At 11 a.m., Rauh, exhausted from the all-night session, appears at the church. The delegates listen silently as he describes the "excruciating pressure" applied to the Credentials Committee: One woman's husband has been threatened with the loss of a judgeship; another member has been pressured by the Secretary of the Army.
Moses rises from the back of the church. He states that he believes the administration will try and trap the MFDP by offering a new compromise. "They promised," continues Moses, "to abolish segregation in Mississippi politics. I asked Humphrey if that meant the federal government would aid in voter registration. 'Those are two seperate matters,' he replied."
Rauh replies that Johnson "won't budge." He is certain there will be no new compromise. Moses speaks of the rumor that the Credentials Committee may adjourn without making a report.
Rauh retorts that he will defeat the motion to adjourn by forming "a coalition with the South to force the Committee to report." Rauh's strategy still centers about the floor fight he believes is inevitable.
Moses finishes by asking the delegation to accept the Green proposal as their minimal demand. The delegates respond with a unanimous "aye."
At 3 p.m. Walter Reuther informs Rauh of the new administration proposal--the plan eventually approved by the convention. The traditional party will be seated after signing a loyalty oath; 1968 convention rules will prohibit segregation in Democratic Party affairs; Edwin King and Aaron Henry will be seated as delegates at large with a vote apiece. Humphrey confers with Henry and King. Moses asks for time to discuss the compromise with the delegation. His request is refused.
At 5 p.m. Rauh returns to the church to ask the delegation to approve the compromise. Moses interruts to remind the delegates that they have already voted to reject the compromise. The delegation cheers him.
Martin Luther King and Ella Baker, MFDP Washington staff member, clash violently over the issue. The delegation must accept the compromise, says King, to lessen "the long suffering and deep-seated frustration of the Negro people." "We must reject it," says Miss Baker, "to condemn the massive political pressure exerted by the administration."
That night, Freedom delegates wearing borrowed credentials enter the covention by "Underground Railway"--once they reach the Mississippi sector, they remove the badges, which are then taken outside and used to bring in more delegtes. A crush of reporters keep the sargeants-at-arms away.
"Fair and Square"
Only Moses periodically penetrates the mass, leading two or three more delegates to the Mississippi seats. Henry sits in the center. "They wanted to seat us at large," he explains to the reporters mobbing him, "but we wanted our seats in Mississippi. We don't see why its so exciting."
Meanwhile, most members of the Credentials Committee express approval of the President's compromise. Support for a minority report immediately slips from eighteen to four. Rauh maintains that the compromise is "fair and square;" he has, however, lost the trust of the Freedom Party. Many staff members unfairly charge King with having convinced the Credentials Committee not to issue a minority report.
Wednesday, August 26: Henry attempts to get the delegates to reconsider the compromise. They refuse to take a new vote; but they agree to listen to the leaders of "groups whose help we've been forced to depend on."
Bayard Rustin discusses the political attitude of the Negro. We are "moving from an early protest movement into the political structure," he begins. "A protest movement requires an attitude of suffering, of absolutism, of vindication. A political movement requires compromise. Mississippi has showed you that political action is what we need. We should have sent the dixiecrats home and stayed and voted."
Of the Convention Hall sit-in, he reflects that such attention-getting devices are becoming obsolete. "Do not make the mistake of applying a demonstration philosophy to a political structure."
King then cautions that "nothing could be more dishonest than to overestimate -- or underestimate -- what has been done. The problem is giving the people a deep-seated sense of what has been accomplished."
Three weeks ago, King continues, "Johnson had no intention of recognizing the MFDP....You have immobilized the political machinery of the nation. Yoy have caused the Democratic Party to purge itself."
Morally Right
Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse argues for the compromise: "Rauh's witnesses shook my colleagues....I am sorry the issue couldn't be brought to the floor...If tonight, for the first time, two Negroes cast votes, that will be tremendous progress."
James Farmer tells the delegates: "You were politically wrong, but morally right. If your decision remains firm, you are choosing not to join the Democratic Party."
Moses rebuts them all: "I think that you are not responsible for this country--its the people running the country that are responsible. All you can know is the hell hole you came from. It is not up to you to make political decisions.
"Last night's demonstration was a creative decision in the sense that it brought the delegation and the COFO workers out of their deep dispair. The whole purpose of the Freedom Party is to get the vote. We have the right to dramatize the fact that we have seats without a vote."
That evening the MFDP delegates again enter the convention hall. The Mississippi seats have been removed. The Freedom delegates stand in the empty space.
That morning ACT agreed to cancel its proposed stall-in at Atlantic City if the MFDP continues its sit-in. It is uncertain how much ACT's announcement influenced Moses' decision to return to the convention floor.
Once the Freedom delegates had entered the convention hall Wednesday night, they could not reconsider the compromise. King attempted to persuade Moses to reconsider his position by telling him that Humphrey promised co-operation with civil rights leaders for the next four years if the compromise was accepted. "We must be both militant and moderate," said King. Replied Moses: "Humphrey and McCarthy haven't been our allies. We need to build a fire under their feet."
* * *
Moses' contempt for tokenism was central to the MFDP's rejection of the compromise. Moses contends: "We are not here to bring politics into civil rights. We are here to bring civil rights into politics."
The MFDP won a compromise which indicates a turning point in the Democratic Party, which traditionally has been profoundly influenced by lilly-white Southern delegations. Why did the delegation still feel morally incapable of agreeing to the compromise?
Rauh's optimism may have been at fault. He should have prepared the delegates for a compromise. But Rauh is a natural optimist. It is probable that the delegates misinterpreted his personality.
The rejection of the compromise was also a rejection of President Johnson. The delegates now view him as a Southerner opposed to progress in civil rights. In his handling of the challange, they charge, he subordinated Negro interests to his use of the convention as a show of great political unity.
Moses, a man of uncompromising morality, imposed his own standards on the delegation during the convention. But Moses, a humble and selfless man, stepped into the leadership role because the Party was floundering. He may step out as the Party gains strength.
Three alternatives are now open to the MFDP. It can remain a small, isolated Mississippi protest group. It can form branches in other states to make a strong Negro voting bloc. Or it can follow its original aim of workin within the structure of the Democratic Party. If it tries to work in the Democratic Party, it may have to realize that a compromise is not necessarily based on betrayal, cowardice, and ignorance, that it is often a part of the process of two strong groups vying for power. Without using the weapon of compromise, the MFDP may remain powerless
