Glorious

Last Thursday, as Barack Obama gave his historical acceptance speech Fannie Lou Hamer was on my mind. Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1964.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s efforts drew national attention to the treatment of Blacks in Mississippi, and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for reelection. Hamer drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her as "that illiterate woman".
Hamer spoke in front of the Credentials Committee which was broadcast nation wide and reached millions of viewers. She told the committee how Blacks in across the country were prevented from voting. As a result of her speech negotiations were conducted, without Hamer’s participation, and a compromise was reached in that the DNC would select the two delegates to be seated. The MFDP was not allowed to choose the delegates for fear they would select Hamer. 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.

Last week, forty-four years later, an African-American accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Fannie Lou Hamer succumbed to breast cancer in 1977 at the age of 59.