Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) ~ Emerald Quill

Jun 25, 2014

Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

6/25/2014 Celestine Green No comments

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was a political party formed in 1964 as an alternative to the dominantly white and conservative Democratic Party of Mississippi. After President Lyndon B. Johnson formed a coalition between liberal Democrats and liberal and moderate Republicans to address issues of concern to African Americans, conservative Southern Democrats openly encouraged their members to vote for the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who opposed civil rights legislation.

In response, African American Mississippians formed the MFDP as an alternative group that would represent their interests at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. With the support of Martin Luther King, Jr., the MFDP nominated three African American women—Fannie Lou Hamer (one of the cofounders of the party) and civil rights activists Annie Devine and Victoria Gray—to run against the traditional Democrats in the state’s 1964 congressional elections.

That year the national Democratic Party held its convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the MFDP sent its delegation. President Johnson and other Democratic Party leaders, although largely sympathetic to the MFDP’s civil rights stance, were dismayed by the negative publicity the group was causing at a time when Johnson wanted media attention focused on his presidential election campaign. While members of the MFDP demanded to be recognized as delegates to the national convention and gave speeches detailing the horrific conditions they dealt with in Mississippi, national party leaders including vice presidential hopeful Hubert Humphrey sought to deal with MFDP representatives behind closed doors. They offered to allow the MFDP members to attend the convention as guests, with two MFDP members seated as at-large delegates, and promised that the Mississippi Democratic Party would be fully integrated in 1968. The MFDP rejected any efforts at compromise, and the attempt to be named the official Democratic delegation from Mississippi was defeated.

Despite their failure at the 1964 convention, the MFDP had a profound influence on Democratic politics, both nationally and in Mississippi. While their efforts caused a number of white Democrats to switch to the Republican Party, their most notable achievement was the encouragement of African American voter registration. In 1964 only 6.7 percent of Mississippi’s voting-age African Americans were registered to vote, but by 1969, that number had jumped to 66.5 percent. In demonstrating that the traditional Democratic hierarchy was vulnerable to grassroots efforts and that African American organizations could have an impact on national politics, the MFDP inspired many African Americans struggling for political recognition.

In 1968 the MFDP joined with a number of other Mississippi groups to form the Mississippi Loyal Democrats, which successfully deposed the Mississippi Democratic delegation to the national convention.

Fannie Lou Hamer, née Townsend was born Oct. 6, 1917, Ruleville, Mississippi. She was an African-American civil rights activist who worked to desegregate the Mississippi Democratic Party.

The youngest of 20 children, Fannie Lou was working the fields with her sharecropper parents at the age of six. Amid poverty and racial exploitation, she received only a sixth-grade education. In 1942 she married Perry (“Pap”) Hamer. Her civil rights activism began in August 1962, when she answered a call by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for volunteers to challenge voter registration procedures that excluded African-Americans. Fired from her job for her activism, she became a field secretary for SNCC and a registered voter in 1963.

In 1964 Hamer became vice-chairperson of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), established after unsuccessful attempts by African-Americans to work with the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party. As a leader of the MFDP she gave a nationally televised address to the Credentials Committee at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in which she described incidents of violence and injustice suffered by civil rights activists, including her own experience of a jailhouse beating that left her crippled.

In 1967 Hamer published To Praise Our Bridges: An Autobiography. As a member of the Democratic National Committee for Mississippi (1968–71) and the Policy Council of the National Women’s Political Caucus (1971–77), she actively opposed the Vietnam War and worked to improve economic conditions in Mississippi. She died March 14, 1977, Mound Bayou, Miss.