Peace and Freedom. Simon Hall
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most of all, as Doug McAdam has shown, was the extent of federal complicity in maintaining Mississippi’s segregationist system.
If SNCC field secretaries had already begun to doubt Washington’s commitment to civil rights, most of the volunteers who arrived in June generally held positive views of the federal government, and many had been inspired by John F. Kennedy’s call to service. Initially, many of the volunteers went to Mississippi under the impression that the “redneck farmer, Southern sheriff, and Dixiecrat politician” were the enemy.14 They soon discovered that the situation was far more complex, as volunteer Brian Peterson explained: “the Klansman-assassin at the local gas station has close connections with the local sheriff, who in turn has connections with the legislature and governor, who in turn have connections with Congress and the President.”15 Karen Duncanwood, a freshman at San Francisco State College, traveled to the Magnolia State a selfdescribed “patriotic American,” but quickly became disillusioned by her experiences. She had low expectations of the local law enforcement agencies, but she had anticipated more from the federal government. Duncanwood recalled that “people’s lives were in danger, people were getting fire-bombed and shot up and beat up, and the FBI knew exactly who was doing it. It was a real shock to realize that the federal government didn’t give a hoot if you lived or died.”16
Indeed, many of the volunteers’ fiercest criticisms were leveled at the FBI, whose agents were frequently disobliging or hostile when called upon to investigate violence against Freedom Summer projects or staff. Often, the most the FBI would do was take notes. Doug McAdam has argued persuasively that, to an overwhelming degree, the volunteers left Mississippi with a much more pessimistic opinion of the federal government—which, in their eyes, had shown itself to be cowardly and amoral.17
The traumatic events at the Democratic Party National Convention, held in Atlantic City at the end of August, seemed to confirm radicals’ claims that the federal government was part of the problem. The MFDP demanded recognition as the legitimate Mississippi delegation on the grounds that the state regulars prevented blacks from participating in precinct, county, and state elections. They believed they had enough liberal support on the credentials committee to force a debate and “roll call” vote on the convention floor. Once it became clear, however, that any seating of the MFDP would precipitate a Southern walk-out, Lyndon Johnson ensured that they would not be seated. Johnson, dangling the vice-presidency before Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, arranged for the doyens of American liberalism—including the UAW’s Walter Reuther—to urge the MFDP to accept a compromise in which they would accept two at-large seats and a promise of future reform. At the same time, supporters of the Freedom Democrats on the credentials committee came under intense pressure not to force the issue onto the convention floor. The MFDP ultimately voted to reject the compromise, Mississippi sharecropper and FDP spokesperson Fannie Lou Hamer explaining that they had not traveled all the way to Atlantic City for “no two seats” because “all of us is tired.”18
Numerous historians have joined movement veterans in seeing Atlantic City as a decisive moment in the relationship between the Democratic Party and the activist civil rights movement.19 SNCC’s Joyce Ladner described the convention as the “end of innocence,” while Bob Moses stated that “Atlantic City was a watershed in the movement because up until then the idea had been that you were working more or less within the Democratic Party…. With Atlantic City, a lot of movement people became disillusioned…. You turned around and your support was puddle-deep.”20 The Democratic Party’s refusal to recognize the Freedom Democrats helped destroy SNCC members’ remaining faith in American liberals. Former SNCC activist Courtland Cox recalled that the liberal power structure’s machinations against the FDP at Atlantic City were particularly radicalizing. He explained that SNCC activists “went there feeling that if you played by the rules, that is to say even if it was dangerous you played by the rules, you got the votes, you did all the things that people said you should do, then the rules would work.” Not only was it clear that playing by the rules did not work, but “the coalescing of the power structure against us,” particularly the use of Hubert Humphrey and Walter Reuther, was a radicalizing influence for SNCC members. “From that day on,” Cox recalled, “we felt that playing by the rules was not enough, that the power was aligned to maintain itself and that in fact the sense … that if you did everything right they would be on your side, people said no. Just not going to happen.”21
The Democratic Party’s liberal establishment was prepared to sacrifice principle and morality on the altar of political expediency. Fears about the white backlash or a Barry Goldwater victory in the November election may have had a degree of legitimacy, but for people who had risked death for the cause of equality, such arguments were irrelevant. Courtland Cox has explained how the arguments about the “wider picture,” such as the need to avoid harming Johnson’s chances for election, were received unsympathetically by SNCC activists and FDP delegates. According to Cox, “nobody cared about that. The reality was, our view was that these people were suffering, they had suffered all this time, that they were going to go back to a hostile environment, their lives were on the line that summer. You know … people got killed and nobody cared. So our agenda was the primary agenda, we were not going to view that their agenda was the primary agenda and ours secondary, no.”
When black Representative William L. Dawson attempted to persuade the FDP delegates that they had to support Lyndon Johnson, Annie Devine replied that “we have been treated like beasts in Mississippi. They shot us down like animals. We risk our lives coming up here … politics must be corrupt if it don’t care none about the people down there.”22 Although many FDP members continued to believe that the Democratic Party could become a worthy ally, and the party campaigned for Johnson in the November election, most SNCC members now dismissed the Democrats as part of the problem.23
SNCC executive director James Forman explained how Atlantic City brought home to grass-roots civil rights activists the realization that the federal government, and in particular the national Democratic Party, was not the savior of black people, that in fact the federal government was an opponent rather than an ally. Forman, who was at least ten years older than most of his SNCC comrades (he had been born in Chicago in 1928) had been a reporter and school teacher before becoming involved in the civil rights movement at the end of the 1950s. According to Forman, who had joined SNCC in the fall of 1961, “Atlantic City was a powerful lesson…. No longer was there any hope, among those who still had it, that the federal government would change the situation in the Deep South.” Forman stated that five years of struggle had radically changed many people, “changed them from idealistic reformers to fulltime revolutionaries. And the change had come through direct experience.”24
SNCC’s radicalization continued in the aftermath of Atlantic City when eleven activists traveled to the West African state of Guinea. This experience encouraged them to view the black struggle in America in a global context, and the sight of blacks running their own country left a lasting impression. Although most returned to the U.S. on October 4, John Lewis and Donald Harris stayed for another month, visiting Egypt, Liberia, Ghana, and other countries. A chance encounter with Malcolm X in Nairobi led to the former Nation of Islam spokesman seeking to forge links with SNCC during the remaining months of his life.25
Despite historians’ emphasis on the progressivism of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, many civil rights workers remained unconvinced about the administration’s commitment to the cause of black equality.26 Black activists’ direct experience of the Democratic Party was often a negative one. South of the Mason-Dixon line the party was the enemy of the freedom movement, which was denounced, red-baited, and opposed by the likes of James Eastland, George Wallace, and Paul Johnson—all important Democrats. Despite the liberal reputation of the national administration, events after Atlantic City further undermined the confidence of civil rights workers in the party. James Coleman’s nomination to the U.S. Fifth Circuit of Appeals in June 1965 was one such instance.27
Coleman, a former governor of Mississippi (1956–1960), was a staunch segregationist who had played a leading role in Mississippi’s response to desegregation. As governor he had opposed school desegregation, black voting, and “race-mixing,” and he had helped create the Mississippi