CHICAGO – On August 22, 1964, Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer spoke. His iconic speech at the Democratic National Convention brought the party to task for not supporting voting rights for black Americans and refusing to grant integrated delegation seats at the convention.
Thursday is the 60th anniversary of those remarks. And on the same day, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to make history by addressing the convention as the first black woman and the first Asian American to accept the major party’s presidential nomination.
If elected, Harris will also be the first female president.
Hamer was the leader of the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which fought to seat the state’s all-white delegation at the 1964 convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
But then-President Lyndon Johnson, who needed the votes of Southern Democrats, was against them.
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The credentials committee offered the party two seats in the congress as a compromise. But Hubert Humphrey Johnson, who is running for vice president, said would not allow Hamer gets one of those spots.
“The president said he wasn’t going to let that illiterate woman speak at the Democratic convention,” Humphrey said.
Johnson even held a press conference to try to distract network coverage from Hamer’s remarks. This plan backfired; Television networks later aired his testimony in its entirety during what was expected to be prime time.
Hamer’s vivid testimony of the fight for voting rights includes sharing the physical abuse she and others faced in that battle. He recounted how he was arrested by white law enforcement officers after attending a voter registration workshop and ordered other black inmates to beat him.
“It’s all about our desire to register, to be first-class citizens,” Hamer said in his speech. “If the Freedom Democratic Party doesn’t sit down now, I’m asking America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, that we have to sleep with our phones turned off because our lives are threatened every day? Because we want to live in America as decent people?”
The historic nature of Harris’ candidacy and the civil rights leaders who helped pave the way for her to stand on stage Thursday are on the minds of conventioneers in Chicago this week — some of whom were here eight years ago. Celebrates Hillary Clinton’s history-making candidacy.
Actor Wendell Pierce, known for his roles in The Wire and Treme, is at the convention this week raising money for the campaign. He said Hamer and the 60th anniversary of his speech are at the forefront of his mind this week.
“Now we are going to nominate a black woman for this party and change American politics forever. And I’m going to be a puddle of tears because those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for what they believe in democracy — those who died and in their final moments, “I hope I’m not dying in vain,” Pierce told NBC News.
Leah Daughtry, a political strategist with close ties to Harris’ office, paid tribute to Hamer, calling him a “god” at a breakfast for black women hosted by a group of longtime Democratic women leaders. they call themselves “colored girls”.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said in remarks Monday at the first night of the Democratic convention that Hamer was 22 in 1964.
“He didn’t get the results he hoped for in Atlantic City, but you can bet that when the official Mississippi delegation sat down at the convention four years later, Fannie Lou Hamer was sitting with them,” Waters added. “Here we are, 60 years later, at another Democratic convention with Kamala Harris as our party’s nominee.”
In an interview with MSNBC Monday night, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison touched on the contributions of Black Americans in getting to this point, recalling the slaves who built the U.S. Capitol, Hamer, Frederick Douglass, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“This is more than a knock on Donald Trump… This is a call to Fannie Lou Hamer, who testified to the DNC Credentials Committee 60 years ago because she couldn’t be part of the Mississippi delegation. white delegation and he said he was tired of being sick and tired.
The Mississippi delegation is also radically different now. State Rep. Sheik Taylor, her Democratic Party chairman, said as she introduced herself during the vote Tuesday night: “We are proud of our heroes like Fannie Lou Hamer.”