Growing Tensions

GROWTH AND TURMOIL, 1948-1977 Growing Tensions

Content Warning: This resource addresses physical and sexual violence and contains a racial slur.

Resource:

Voting Rights and Violent Suppression

Background

By 1964, Black activists in Mississippi were exhausted by their inability to improve voting access for people of color in the state. Without the vote, they could not change policy. Everything hinged on this one factor.

That summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was formed. The MFDP presented itself as the alternative to the “regular” Mississippi Democratic Party. The regular party excluded all Black people. The MFDP welcomed Black Americans and others. The group registered over 80,000 members soon after it was established.

During the 1964 presidential primaries, the Democratic Party once again blocked Black participation. The MFDP held its own election and chose 68 delegates to attend the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The MFDP wanted the DNC leadership to recognize them as Mississippi’s legitimate delegation. They claimed that the regular party was segregated and therefore illegitimate. The DNC allowed the MFDP to present its case. Many MFDP members and allies, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., testifed and submitted evidence.

The testimony was powerful, and some DNC members thought the MFDP made good points. But President Lyndon B. Johnson was afraid of losing Southern support. He used his infuence to deny the MFDP roles at the convention.

The DNC’s refusal to acknowledge the MFDP was a huge disappointment. After the summer of 1964, many disillusioned activists started to turn towards more radical strategies.

About the Document

Fannie Lou Hamer was an activist and community organizer from rural Mississippi. She was a poor sharecropper who served as the vice chair of the MFDP. This is a transcript of her testimony during the hearings.

The hearings were televised nationally. President Johnson was particularly concerned about Fannie Lou’s testimony because he suspected it would include graphic details about her experiences and make his leadership look bad. In response, he arranged an impromptu press conference to take place in the middle of her testimony. He anticipated that news outlets would cover his news conference and not her speech. This tactic backfred. The news outlets realized that President Johnson was trying to block Fannie Lou’s testimony. They aired her remarks in full later that day. Many historians believe fewer Americans would have heard her speak if Johnson had not held his press conference that day. Instead, her speech was the climax of the hearings.

Vocabulary

• blackjack: A stick-like weapon or baton. • credentials: Qualifcations. • literacy test: A test that was supposed to determine a person’s ability to read but was actually designed to prevent people from registering to vote. It was a well-known voter suppression tactic. • Medgar Evers: A civil rights activist who focused his work in Mississippi and was assassinated in 1963. • Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP): A short-lived political party formed in 1964 to ofer Black Mississippi residents an alternative to the all-white political parties controlling the state.

• plantation owner: A person who owns a farm or plantation. Plantation owners often paid sharecroppers to work the land. • sharecropper: A farmer who works on land owned by someone else and shares the profts with their landlord. • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): A national organization founded to recruit and organize young people interested in the civil rights movement.

Discussion Questions

• Fannie Lou Hamer describes three incidents connected to her eforts to register to vote. What happened during each? • How would you describe Fannie Lou Hamer’s experience in the county jail cell? What does this tell you about the relationship between Black activists and white police ofcers in Mississippi? • What does this speech tell you about Fannie Lou Hamer as an activist? • How does Fannie Lou Hamer conclude her speech? What is she asking? What is her opinion of America? • How does the background information add to your understanding of this document? Under what circumstances did she make this speech?