 I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey. Now this journey, some of you may remember, but most of you don't. This is 1964 that we're going to do today. And the reason we're going to show this film about Fannie Lou Hamer and the summer of 1964 is because we're at the beginning of the election year. And I want you to see this. I really want you to pay attention because if reason, what they went through to get the vote and the rest of us take the grant, you really must really pay attention. Now this takes place in 1964 at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. And as you know, I am a political junkie, always have been. And I was living in New Jersey because my husband was in the Air Force. And Senator Douglas of Illinois had threatened to close the commissaries. Well, when your husband was only making $350 a month, closing the commissaries was a big deal. So across the nation, we had a petition against Senator Douglas. And he was to be at the convention in Atlantic City. So I have one little girl in the store and I'm 99 months pregnant and I head down to Atlantic City campaign against Senator Douglas. Well, my husband said, if you have that baby down there on the boardwalk, don't even call me. He was just so fine. So when we get to Atlantic City, in all of these, there's huge numbers of black youngster, young people in their 20s. And some of them are considerably older. And because this was before internet, all of these other wonderful things that we take advantage of, I had no idea what this group was about. This was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. I had no idea. I'm thinking we're going for Senator Douglas and there's something else. Well, because I look like what I do, the security decided I belong with this group. So they ushered me in the stroller into the group. Now, when you see the picture, you probably won't find me. But it's by accident that I became a part of history. So I really want attention because what these people went through to be there is incredible. It is astounding. Results are what we live with today. So Eric, if we can see the first part, whites travel to the south to see firsthand the state called the closed society. Any doubts we had about the desirability of coming down before we came have been removed. What we've seen since we've been here is what we discovered is that the people who run Mississippi today can only do so by force. They cannot allow free election in Mississippi because if they did, they wouldn't run Mississippi. And as we go around Mississippi and are arrested and beaten and charged with miscellaneous and very imaginative traffic violations that don't occur and threatened and told to leave, we understand why people asked us to come down here because inside Mississippi, the rule of force is so hard on them that they can't shake the oath. When we leave Mississippi, we'll tell what we found and the people of the United States aren't going to allow this to go on forever. Movement leaders debated how to keep national attention on Mississippi. In June 1964, Bob Moses announced freedom summer. We hope to send in to Mississippi this summer upwards of 1000 teachers, ministers, lawyers and students from all around the country who will engage in what we're calling freedom schools, community center programs, voter registration activity, research work, work in the white communities and in general a program designed to open up Mississippi to the country. Opening up Mississippi would not be easy. Local newspapers warned of a coming invasion. Governor Paul Johnson called for more highway patrolmen. The city of Jackson ordered an armored truck for riot control. All to resist college students from across the country who had volunteered to work in the state during the summer. Most of the students that people were bringing in for the summer project were from large universities and they're from families who were politicians, bankers, lawyers and others and we felt by the fact that bringing in those particular people that the attention of their parents and relatives from the various different other parts of the country would be on these areas and by how large some of the whites in here is to press the American public would have much more concern than if there were just a bunch of blacks that were in the state. So that's the beginning and we also had in that group that summer was Carl and the only young. Now that that may not unveil with you Carl and the only young. Carl was an activist and worked as I think he was a substitute teacher in Y&I. He was a vital part of the Hawaiian Renaissance. He loved what he was doing and of course he could not resist going to something. Now Carl was Chinese. This is my story. I love it. Carl was the money changer. All of these white children, youngsters, I keep calling them children, but young people came down from the north. Well of course the banks and none of those people would cash the checks because their parents were sending them cash. I mean checks not cash. So what happened is Carl becomes a money changer. Ah you say the money changer of course because the establishment, the white establishment looks at him thinks oh he's Chinese. He must be a Chinese restaurant or a laundry. So they don't question why he has checks. So they cash the checks for Carl and he is able to keep this whole thing moving with that again racism because that's what they thought. All these Chinese, he can't be part of them. So we'll cash his checks. Convention in Atlantic City. Eric. August the state's Democratic Party met to select delegates to the National Convention. As usual, blacks were not allowed to participate, but this would be no ordinary election year. Two weeks later the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party chose its own delegates to challenge the right of the all-white regulars to represent the state. The MFDP emphasized that it was open to all citizens. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party is only beginning and it is beginning on the basis that it believes that a political party should be open to all the people who wish to subscribe to its principle. That means it's open to it's open to even the son of the planter on whose plantation you work if that son has reached the point that he's willing to subscribe to your principle. The MFDP delegation of 64 blacks and four whites prepared to leave for Atlantic City. Their goal was to be seated at the Democratic National Convention as the true representatives of their home state. For many it was their first trip out of Mississippi. For all this was the culmination of Freedom Summer, the final opportunity to open up Mississippi to the nation. Atlantic City, New Jersey, site of the 1964 Democratic Convention. Lyndon Johnson expected no opposition in getting his party's nomination, but was concerned the MFDP would disrupt party unity. With the arrival of the Freedom Democrats on August 20th, there were now two delegations in town from Mississippi. The Democratic Party would have to decide which would represent the state on the convention floor. That decision would be made by the Credentials Committee. On Saturday, August 22nd, America watched this nationally televised hearing. It is the very terror that these people are living through that is the reason that Negroes aren't voting that they're kept out of the Democratic Party by the terror of the regular party. And what I want the Credentials Committee to hear is the terror which the regular party uses on the people of Mississippi, which is what Reverend King was explaining, which is what Aaron Henry was explaining, and which is what the next witness will explain, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Rueville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator Gaines O'Eason and Senator Stennis. If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, our question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hook, because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America. We will return to this scene in Atlantic City, but now we switch to the White House and NBC's Robert Gorowski. Lyndon Johnson cut off coverage of MFDP testimony by making a last-minute request for network airtime. We had an hour before the Credentials Committee, Fannie Lou Hamer made her famous pitch. Martin Luther King, we had the greatest array of people you have ever can imagine, and a Credentials Committee was very impressed, but Johnson was not. Despite the TV cut off by the president, Mrs. Hamer's message had gotten through. Viewers back home sent telegrams to delegates, urging support of the MFDP. But President Johnson was afraid Southerners would desert the party if the MFDP were seated. He began pressuring liberals close to the Freedom Democrats. Senator Hubert Humphrey, a longtime champion of civil rights, was feeling that pressure. Many believed he would not be selected for the vice presidency unless he helped stop the MFDP. My only interest in this is an attempt to try to bring about a reconciliation abuse in the hopes to keep our convention united with one objective, to defeat Mr. Goldwater in November, and to carry forward the Democratic program. Humphrey assigned Walter Mondale, his young protege from Minnesota, to work out a solution. See, everybody was trying to think of something that was simple and would solve it and would satisfy everybody. The problem was there was no such solution, and so we'd go around and around and around and everybody'd try this and try that, and writers would see if they could write around the problems and philosophers, see if they could dream of something to dream over the problem. It never, it wouldn't go away. It had to be resolved. It had to be compromised, I think, in the way that we did it, and it was inevitable that some people would be unhappy. The committee did come up with a compromise. It offered the MFDP two seats at large, meaning they would not represent the state of Mississippi. It allowed the all-white regulars to be seated only if they would swear loyalty to the Democratic ticket. Finally, the committee promised to bar from future conventions any delegation guilty of discrimination. In response, all but four of the all-white regulars walked out of the convention. It may not satisfy everybody, the extremes on the right or the extremes on the left, but we think it is a just compromise. We think it is based soundly on the law. We think it clearly recognizes, without compromises, the basic devotion of this party to human rights, and we think it represents and sets the stage for the overwhelming victory of the man who, more than anybody else in the world, represents the cause of justice and law today, President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Lyndon Johnson announced that Hubert Humphrey would be his running mate before boarding the plane for the convention. In Atlantic City, the Freedom Democrats had not yet decided whether to accept or reject the compromise. We've got an offer to our people. We've got a great deal out of this. I think the call list of losses is a big mistake. You were talking before of no compromise. Now you've got your two delegates in. The regular party's gotten three. Do you think you've made a substantial gain? I think we've made a terrific gain. You always talk no compromise at a convention until you get the best you can and you're quit. Are the leaders of the Freedom Democrats satisfied? I don't think so, and I don't sign up for them. Nobody ever gets all they want. The leaders of the regulars aren't satisfied either. They're going back to Jackson. Political allies and national civil rights leaders urge the MFDP to accept the compromise, but the Freedom Democrats voted overwhelmingly to turn it down. In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, we didn't come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired. The whole issue around the compromise for us and for me was that it was some kind of political ploy that they understood, but for us, for Mississippi, it was what was right and what was wrong. It was, we had been done wrong. Our rights had been taken away, and you just couldn't issue some two seats at large to correct that. And it was a moral situation that had to be right. So it wasn't just a political something to get away with is that we sit in the rooms and negotiate. They knew about those kind of things, but we didn't. How to sit in the rooms and negotiate way and say, we'll take the best of this, a piece of that. We went after what was right, and it was wrong the way we had been treated for hundreds and hundreds of years, denied the right to register to vote, denied the right to participate in the political process, and that's what was going on. The MFDP delegates made one last appeal for national attention. They tried to sit in the seats abandoned by the Mississippi regulars. May, will you identify yourself for us, please? My name is Mrs. Sandy Lou Hamer. I'm the vice chairman of the freedom democrat party. Where did you get the credentials to get into the building tonight, Mr. Hamer? Some law friends of ours gave us an invitation to come in. We sit with them a while, and we wanted to sit in our own seats. Do you have any kind of credentials that will get you into these seats? No, we don't, only as American citizens. Mr. Sargent Arms, have you had any contingency plans for this? None at all. I'm just standing here peacefully, trying to keep this aisle clear. When they are before the eyes of the world, they are peaceful and loving. And when they get back to Mississippi, it's never you can't come in here, nigga, you can't come in there, nigga, you get out. And here we are in the eyes of the world, seeing the same thing that happens down, way down in the deep south, Mississippi. The MFDP was never seated at the 1964 convention, but their protest opened up the democratic party and changed national politics. For some, Atlantic City ended in disillusionment. They had lost faith in America's leaders, but they had come to know their own power. And yes, we have come to know our own power. What happened there is that the credentials committee met, and they made a decision that all delegations across the U.S., all of 57, 50 states plus the territories, would have to be in racial makeup and later in gender. So, every push, Annie Lewis is mine. She is the woman who did the most for the modern day democratic party. Now, credentials committee met in 1964, 1968, was the first convention where all the delegates were equal in race or ethnic. However, you remember, and she was seated in the 1968 convention, but if you remember, that was the one in Chicago, and it was crazy with the stormtroopers or the police and the hippies and the whole thing about the war, the whole convention was just crazy. So, most people did not get to see what had happened. The fruits of their labor for the summer of 1964 actually happened in the summer of 1968. How do we bring that up to today? Buddy that is watching this, I don't care where you are, be sure that you registered to vote. We watch people suffer and die for the rights to vote. We cannot just take it for granted. We must, we must take a stand, register to vote. I'm not asking you who to vote for, I'm not telling you who to vote for, but of course, you must do it. You must, you must, you must. And what else is there to say? That's how we keep our democracy. Last week we saw at the Senate when they said that the man with the orange man that lived in the White House acquitted and we heard the applause, that, my dear, signaled the end of the republic. And unless you, you make a difference, you, you create tomorrow. So, therefore, you must vote. Again, I'm not saying who to vote for, but you must vote. And I thank you so much for staying with me week after week. And we'll see you next time. Next week, we are going to talk with some people on the Guller Islands. I know most of you don't know where the Guller Islands, so you're going to have to come back for this next week and find them. Thank you again and aloha.