Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [140]
But all of Atlantic City had seen better days. By 1964, it was New Jersey’s poorest town and a generation beyond its heyday, when summer weekends had brought millions to the shore. Carny rides still whirled, and a Ferris wheel and humpback roller coaster still rose above the clutter, but somehow they seemed smaller than before. And the crowds were smaller, much smaller. Only the Boardwalk retained its stature—six miles long and sixty feet wide, stretching from pier to pier along the white sand. Flat-roofed jitneys, like lost golf carts, still careened past sunburned tourists sampling the kitsch that clung to life. At the Steel Pier, horses and their riders still dove headlong into a pool. Nearby, a flagpole sitter sat atop her perch. Pitchmen beckoned the bored into parlors to play skee-ball or pokerino. And on Pacific Avenue, not far from the Gem Hotel, Sally Rand still did her fan dance, though at the age of sixty, she drew smaller audiences.
This year, however, the tourist season usually highlighted by the Miss America Pageant had bigger events in store. On August 30, the convention hall fronting the Boardwalk, a huge, Quonset-shaped building, would host the Beatles. And a week before the concert, the same hall was hosting the Democratic National Convention. The president would arrive that Thursday for what the press was touting as “a coronation.” Posters featuring a kicking donkey welcomed Democrats to sadly neglected hotels—the Deauville, the Shelburne, the Seaside. Checking in, delegates traded Goldwater jokes and spoke of celebrities due to join them—Carol Channing, Milton Berle, and, rumor had it, Jacqueline Kennedy. On the Boardwalk, they strolled past arcades, bought ashtrays, Beatles dolls, and T-shirts proclaiming “All the Way with LBJ.” Above heads bobbing in the surf, small planes towed banners for Coppertone Lotion. Amid the laughter, the squealing children, the couples arm in arm, no one paid much attention to the Freedom Democrats. No one, that is, except the president.
Depending on the poll, LBJ led Goldwater in the popular vote by 59-31, or even 67-28, percent. But with the convention not even begun, already the president’s nightmare was unfolding. And Mississippi was not his only problem. Alabama delegates, asked to pledge their loyalty to the party ticket, were threatening a walkout. Incensed by the Civil Rights Act, Alabama governor George Wallace was ranting about the Democrats’ “alien philosophy,” invoking the ghosts of Reconstruction and predicting a southern uprising, possibly even a third-party run in November. Wallace, Mississippi’s Governor Johnson, and two other southern governors had refused LBJ’s invitation to dine at the White House. And twenty-five Democratic congressmen had just urged their party to seat the Freedom Democrats. The press was predicting a floor fight, and Texas governor John Connally was telling the president where that would lead: “If you seat those black buggers the whole South will walk out!” The president sat in the White House, brooding about the spoiling of his “coronation.”
As Freedom Democrats stood singing in the cramped confines of the Union Temple Baptist Church, they had little idea of the forces mounting against them. Here they were sleeping five to a room, still finishing the baloney sandwiches they had brought for their bus trip, still pinching themselves to make sure they were really here—out of Mississippi, at a national convention. Who could possibly regard them as a threat to the president?
That Friday afternoon, the Boardwalk beckoned, but the lobbying could not wait. Aaron “Doc” Henry, Freedom Democrat chairman, spoke to the press. Everyone knew Mississippi’s official delegation would support Goldwater in November, Henry said. So the Freedom