Word: fdp
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Officially, Party leaders justified the directive by claiming concern that the press was beginning to view the FDP as a civil rights project based in New York or Washington rather than as a political movement indigenous to Mississippi. There were also three unofficial, but more substantial, reasons for the directive...
First, many Northern lobbyists had proven rather imaginative in describing the Party to delegates, at times hinting that the FDP group in Atlantic City would be 50% white. Understandably, the Party wished to squelch such rumors at their source. Second, the Goldwater nomination had impressed FDP leaders with the importance of a Democratic victory in November, and there was acute worry that overzealous lobbying might turn the "Mississippi question" into a wedge between quarelling party factions in key states like New York and California...
More important than these two, however, was a third, less noble, reason for the directive; the suspicious, paranoic, militance which propelled the Party. White allies, including Northern lobbyists, were viewed less as assets than as conspirators waiting to exploit the FDP for selfish ends. The Party seemed to prefer testing its friends to using them constructively...
...Joseph Rauh quietly took over. Vice-Chairman of ADA and leader of the Democratic Party in Washington, Rauh spent most of July preparing the FDP's legal case for the Credentials Committee. With the approach of August, he also assumed responsibility for gathering Northern delegate strength. It was a difficult task, since the President was actively working for the "traditional" delegation...
Rauh began his campaign for support by sprucing up the FDP's image. Seeking to eradicate the popular conception of the Party as a SNCCCORE enterprise, he requested active support from the NAACP and the National Council of Churches. Clarence Mitchell, NAACP Washington representative, is a close friend of Rauh, and by early August Mitchell had pressed the Association into action: Roy Wilkins pledged to endorse the Freedom delegation before the Platform and Credentials Committees. Bishop Spike, of the National Council of Churches Commission on Race and Religion, also agreed to lend a hand behind the scenes...