At the national convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey the MFDP claimed the seats for delegates for Mississippi, not on the grounds of the Party rules, but because the official Mississippi delegation had been elected by a primary conducted under Jim Crow laws in which blacks were excluded because of poll taxes, literacy tests, and even violence against black voters.

Forrest County was also a center of activity for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ( MFDP ) which sent a slate of delegates to the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City to challenge the seating of the all-white, pro-segregation delegates elected by the regular party in primaries in which African Americans could not participate.

The MFDP hoped to replace the regulars as the officially-recognized Democratic Party organization in Mississippi by winning the Mississippi seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention for a slate of delegates elected by disenfranchised black Mississippians and white sympathizers.

In the face of unrelenting violence and economic retaliation, the MFDP held local caucuses, county assemblies, and a state-wide convention ( as prescribed by Democratic Party rules ) to elect 68 delegates ( including 4 whites ) to the 1964 Democratic National Convention scheduled for Atlantic City, New Jersey in August.

The MFDP sent its elected delegates by bus to the convention.

They therefore asked that the MFDP delegates be seated rather than the segregationist regulars.

The Credentials Committee televised its proceedings, which allowed the nation to see and hear the testimony of the MFDP delegates, particularly the testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer, who gave a moving and evocative portrayal of her hard brutalized life as a sharecropper on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta and the retaliation inflicted on her for trying to register to vote.

After that, most knowledgeable observers thought the majority of the delegates were ready to unseat the regulars and seat the MFDP delegates in their place.

When all but three of the " regular " Mississippi delegates left because they refused to support Johnson against Goldwater, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic northern delegates and took the seats vacated by the Mississippi delegates, only to be removed by the national Party.

Though the MFDP challenge had wide support among many convention delegates, Lyndon B. Johnson feared losing Southern support in the coming campaign and he prevented the MFDP from replacing the regulars.

When MFDP delegates challenged the pro-segregationist, all-white official delegation, a major conflict ensued.

The MFDP delegation was not seated, but their influence on the Democratic Party helped to elect many black leaders in Mississippi and forced a rule change to allow women and minorities to sit as delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

Future negotiations were conducted without Hamer, and the compromise was modified such that the Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer.

At the national convention the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ( MFDP ) claimed the seats for delegates for Mississippi, on the grounds that the official Mississippi delegation had been elected in violation of the party's rules because blacks had been systematically excluded from voting in the primaries, and participating in the precinct and county caucuses and the state convention ; whereas the MFDP delegates had all been elected in strict compliance with party rules.

Eventually, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther and the black civil rights leaders including Roy Wilkins and Bayard Rustin worked out a compromise: two of the 68 MFDP delegates chosen by Johnson would be made at-large delegates and the remainder would be non-voting guests of the convention ; the regular Mississippi delegation was required to pledge to support the party ticket ; and no future Democratic convention would accept a delegation chosen by a discriminatory poll.

" The failure of the compromise effort allowed the rest of the Democratic Party to conclude that the MFDP was simply being unreasonable, and they lost a great deal of their liberal support.

The MFDP refused this " compromise ," which permitted the undemocratic, white-only, regulars to keep their seats and denied votes to the MFDP.

Even though they were denied official recognition, the MFDP kept up their agitation within the Convention.

In the end, the MFDP rejected the compromise, but had changed the debate to the point that the Democratic Party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation from their states ' delegations in 1968.

But the MFDP delegates refused because by accepting the official all-white Mississippi delegation, the party validated a process in which blacks had been denied their constitutional right to vote and participate in the political process.

They felt that because the MFDP had conducted their delegate selection process according to the party rules, they should be seated as the Mississippi delegation, not just a token two of them as at-large delegates.

After it proved to be impossible to register black voters against the opposition of state officials, Freedom Summer volunteers switched to building the MFDP using a simple, alternate, process of signing up party supporters that did not require blacks to openly defy whites by trying to register at the courthouse or take a complex and unfair literacy test.

With participation in the regular Mississippi Democratic Party blocked by segregationists, COFO established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ( MFDP ) as a non-exclusionary rival to the regular party organization with the intention of having the MFDP recognized by the national Democratic Party as the legitimate party organization in Mississippi.

In addition to voter registration and the MFDP, the Summer Project also established a network 30 to 40 voluntary summer schools – called " Freedom Schools " – as an alternative to Mississippi's totally segregated and underfunded school system.

Eventually, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther and black civil rights leaders ( including Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King, and Bayard Rustin ) worked out a compromise with MFDP leaders: the MFDP would receive two non-voting seats on the floor of the Convention ; the regular Mississippi delegation would be required to pledge to support the party ticket ; and no future Democratic convention would accept a delegation chosen by a discriminatory poll.

Victoria Jackson Gray of Palmers Crossing ran on the MFDP ticket against incumbent Senator John Stennis and John Cameron of Hattiesburg ran for Representative in the 5th District.

With participation in the regular Mississippi Democratic Party blocked by segregationists, COFO built on the success of the Freedom Ballot by formally establishing the MFDP in April 1964 as a non-discriminatory, non-exclusionary rival to the regular party organization.

* " Civil Rights Betrayed "-International Socialist Review article on the 40th anniversary of the MFDP

As Edwin King, who ran for Lieutenant Governor on the MFDP ticket, stated, “ Our assumption was that the parents of the Freedom School children, when we met them at night, that the Freedom Democratic Party would be the PTA .”

When they returned the next day to find that convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before, the MFDP stayed to sing freedom songs.

The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP.

Though the MFDP failed to unseat the regulars at the convention, they did succeed in dramatizing the violence and injustice by which the white power structure governed Mississippi and disenfranchised black citizens.

The MFDP and its convention challenge eventually helped pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

She worked as the coordinator of the Washington office of the MFDP and accompanied a delegation of the MFDP to the National Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1964.

The national Party's liberal leaders supported a compromise in which the white delegation and the MFDP would have an even division of the seats ; Johnson was concerned that, while the regular Democrats of Mississippi would probably vote for Goldwater anyway, if the Democratic Party rejected the regular Democrats, he would lose the Democratic Party political structure that he needed to win in the South.

With the help of Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Party leader Walter Mondale, Johnson engineered a " compromise " in which the national Democratic Party offered the MFDP two at-large seats, which allowed them to watch the floor proceedings but not take part.

They suggested a compromise which would give the MFDP two non-voting seats in exchange for other concessions, and secured the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the plan.

In mid-1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ( MFDP ) was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year as not representative of all Mississippians.

As MFDP Vice Chair Fannie Lou Hamer said, " We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we'd gotten here.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ( MFDP ) was an American political party created in the state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement.

Building the MFDP was a major thrust of the Freedom Summer project.

To ensure his victory in November, Johnson maneuvered to prevent the MFDP from replacing the regulars.