The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was an interracial third party that challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Founded by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of civil rights groups involved with the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, the MFDP sought to dramatize the systematic denial of African American voting rights in Mississippi.
The MFDP argued that because black citizens were denied access to choosing delegates in the Mississippi Democratic Party, they represented the state’s only freely chosen delegation. In an effort to persuade members of the Credentials Committee to vote in their favor, the delegation offered testimony regarding the challenges faced by African Americans when trying to vote in Mississippi . When Fannie Lou Hamer, the daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, gave an impassioned speech to the committee, President Lyndon Johnson hastily called a press conference to shift attention away from Atlantic City. Nevertheless, the evening television news showed portions of Hamer's testimony. Her emotional remarks moved people throughout the nation, prompting President Johnson to seek a compromise.
When Johnson offered MFDP delegates the right to participate vocally in the convention proceedings but not vote, MFDP leaders quickly rejected the compromise. The Democratic leadership then offered a new compromise that would provide two at-large seats at the convention while the other delegates would be accepted as “guests.” In addition, the convention in 1968 would bar any state delegation that discriminated against blacks. Although Martin Luther King , Jr. and some moderate leaders supported the proposal, the younger activists did not; and after hours of discussion, the compromise was overwhelmingly rejected.
The internal conflict over Johnson’s compromise exacerbated organizational tensions within COFO, and the MFDP’s failure to fully realize its goals left many activists disillusioned with the political process. The party’s efforts, however, did put a spotlight on the issue of voting rights and demonstrated that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not enough. The MFDP’s visibility, along with the media attention given to continued violence in Selma, provided leverage for the Voting Rights Act, signed by President Johnson in 1965.