Rumble on the Promenade

In August 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, a Mississippi sharecropper, Fannie Lou Hamer, challenged Lyndon Johnson and the party establishment with the stinging question, “Is this America?” Hamer was a leader of the Freedom Democratic Party, the outgrowth of grassroots voting rights campaigns and the vicious Klan violence that came in response. That summer the Freedom Party launched an audacious challenge of Mississippi’s convention delegation, insisting that the all-white panel represented an unconstitutional selection process that excluded Black citizens. They called for the seating of their own integrated slate, elected through an open vote. But their convictions collided with the power of the president, who feared an electoral backlash by southern whites if the challenge achieved success. Johnson used all of his leverage, and the FBI, to defeat the Freedom delegates. The dramatic clash in Atlantic City proved pivotal for the movement and the nation.