Word: mississippi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Many histories of the FDP's convention challenge should be written. The challenge should be was simultaneously a watershed in the history of Mississippi, a crisis-point in the history of the civil rights movement, and a significant footnote to the history of the Democratic Party. However, as a white Northerner working sporadically for the FDP in Washington and Atlantic City, I could see the unfolding convention challenge only as a case study in political lobbying and public relations...
...April 26, 1964 the Party began taking shape in June, with the influx of Freedom Summer volunteers. At this stage many of the FDP's Northern friends worried at its sluggishness in building an active organization and constituency. During one June visit to Washington Aaron Henry, NAACP chief in Mississippi and eventual spokesman for the Party, became angry with the impatience of his young Northern supporters: "All you consider is politics and this party thing. We're handling a couple hundred community centers at once down there. We'll cross the political bridge if and when we come...
...July the Party ceased ignoring its Northern backers and began counseling them to remain silent and inert. Henceforth information about the Party was to come only from Jackson, and lobbyists were instructed to refer curious newsmen and delegates "to the Mississippi office." In view of the number of Northern delegates still to be won over, the directive seemed ludicrously impractical. There were however several good reasons...
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...
...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...