President Joe Biden made civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer one of three posthumous recipients of a Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and former Michigan Gov. George Romney.
Hamer is known for her work with the “Freedom Summer” campaign of 1964 and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the racist Mississippi Democratic Party in 1964 by claiming status as the “only democratically constituted body of Mississippi citizens.” Hamer and the MFDP held duplicate precinct and county meetings alongside the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party that year, with Freedom Summer students and SNCC volunteers gathering “freedom registration” signatures among voters and picking their own delegates. Organizers then tried to route the bigoted Democratic Party at the 1964 national convention in Atlantic City.
Hamer's work at the Atlantic City convention in 1964 marked the beginning of the Dixiecrat element fleeing to the Republican Party.
Mississippi civil rights worker Unita Blackwell, who worked alongside Hamer in that effort, said in an interview that, "We wanted all of the seats, or half, of the delegation that was representing Mississippi."
The MFDP delegation contained almost 70 members, including, Blackwell, Hamer, Hartman Turnbow and other local civil rights figures, all determined to either supplant entrenched national party racists or broadcast their racism with a theatrical seizure before national cameras. After arranging their own travel to Atlantic City, MFDP representatives converged on the convention floor and began circulating a desegregated alternative political platform, fraternizing with Democratic delegations from other states and parading the formal state party’s explicit racism.
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson would sign the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 the very next year, but at the time of the convention, the Texas Democrat was desperate to placate his party’s racist Dixiecrat enclave, whose support he needed to survive to the November election. However, Hamer’s subversive MFDP maneuvers on the convention floor did nothing to curry Dixiecrat favor, and Johnson eventually went so far as to interrupt Hamer's now famous convention speech by drawing media cameras from her presentation.
Desperate to unite the party against Republican forces in November, Minneapolis Attorney General Walter Mondale and the Democratic Party Credentials Committee proposed to meet halfway with Dixiecrat racists by arranging for the MFDP to get two powerless “at-large” seats amid an all-white Dixiecrat wing. Freedom party workers had been expecting capitulation from party leaders, however, and were hostile to the prospect.
"We had a meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, and the people told us that when we left there on them two buses headed to Atlantic City ... that if we didn't get half of those seats ... just tell them to keep them all and come on back home, Blackwell said.
Hamer, Blackwell and the rest of the MFDP’s delegation were heartbroken when notable Black leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., NAACP head Roy Wilkins and SCLC director Andrew Young pressed them to accept the compromise. Supporters promised extraordinary measures from Johnson if MFDP interference did not derail his race to the White House, but members balked.
Organizers offered Mississippi branch NAACP leader Aaron Henry and white Mississippi activist and Delta Ministry Founder Rev. Ed King two seats, but both wound up siding against the compromise with the MFDP delegation, who considered the agreement “throwing … scraps out to the dogs.”
"They came to (our hotel) door, told us what it was, and gave it to us, and we said 'nope! That hotel was jumping that night," Blackwell said.
Regardless of whether the MFDP accepted the compromise, the segregated Mississippi Democratic Party delegation was damaged. Forced to confront their rank racism before party peers from more civilized states, white delegates lost their taste for participation and abandoned their seats the following day.
Dixiecrat separatists continued to shrink from the sudden spotlight upon their racism. They deserted the Democratic Party that year, with white Mississippi voters overwhelmingly choosing Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in November. Mississippi Gov. Paul Johnson did not endorse the Democratic Party's candidate that year, despite being a Democrat himself. Republican candidate Barry Goldwater instead appealed to white Mississippi because he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed poll taxes and businesses refusing customer service based on race.
With segregation slipping out of fashion nationally, (at least overtly) Goldwater went on to lose the general election that year, and Johnson delivered upon his promises by signing the Voting Right Act. Republican-appointed Supreme Court judges have effectively worked to gut the act over the last 10 years.
The media bonanza of speeches and arguments at the Atlantic City convention in 1964 marked the beginning of a restructuring of the Democratic Party at the national level, making it more inclusive of race and gender, with the Dixiecrat element fleeing to the Republican Party. The conversion ramped up after Democratic administrations passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with Mississippi Dixiecrats preferring kinship with GOP calls to limit federal desegregation efforts. Racist philanderers like U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (who championed segregation while impregnating underage Black maids) blazed a trail to the GOP that would tar the next four decades. And as of 2024, race largely determines party membership in Mississippi, with most African Americans voting Democratic and the Republican Party presenting a homogeneous party of white voters.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor, offered to Americans who have contributed to the prosperity, values or security of the United States, world peace or other significant societal, public or private endeavors. Awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hamer and other recipients will be one of President Biden’s last official acts as president.
Hamer is the 11th Mississippian to receive the honor since 1964.
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