Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [146]
The Credentials Committee met again that Sunday afternoon, promising a decision by 6:00 p.m. They had three options. All Freedom Democrats might be seated in lieu of the white delegation. None might be seated—they were not a legal party, after all. Or both delegations, if willing to sign loyalty oaths to support LBJ, could be seated, each delegate given half a vote. As a Freedom Democrat handout noted, this 50/50 solution had settled several previous convention disputes, including one in 1944 when Congressman Lyndon Johnson had led a pro-FDR challenge to a conservative Texas delegation.
But warned that the entire South would walk out, President Lyndon Johnson wanted no such solution. His plan was to seat Freedom Democrats as “honored guests,” with no voting privileges. Freedom Democrats were dead set against such a “back of the bus” treatment. After voting down the 50/50 split, the Credentials Committee was deadlocked. Then an Oregon congressman offered a fourth plan. Two Freedom Democrats could be seated “at large.” Joseph Rauh’s heart sank “because he was on our side, and here our side was reducing its demand to two before the fight had started.” No vote was taken on the two-seat compromise. A subcommittee, chaired by Minnesota attorney general Walter Mondale, continued the discussion into the evening. At 8:45 p.m., a bomb threat was phoned to the SNCC/CORE office. Sometime that evening, a call to the White House told the president that the Freedom Democrats definitely had enough support for a floor vote. “Tell Rauh if he plans to play with us in this administration,” the president said, “he better not let that get out on the floor.”
Born and raised in Mississippi, the Freedom Democrats had few illusions about democracy. They knew how far power would go to protect its pecking order. Though still testing democracy’s breadth, they knew all too well its depths. Moderation, ethics, principles—these were for stable times, when blacks in Mississippi “knew their place.” But they were not in Mississippi anymore. They had bused a thousand miles to put its horrors behind them. Here at a higher level of power, nearly every Freedom Democrat thought that this time, democracy might live up to its name. The lessons would come quickly.
That weekend, FBI agents broke into the SNCC/CORE office on Atlantic Avenue, a block from the convention hall. The agents had just come from tapping Martin Luther King’s hotel phone. It took them just a few minutes to wiretap phones used by Freedom Democrats. The surveillance had been ordered by the president himself. J. Edgar Hoover considered wiretapping one’s own party convention “way out of line” but still sent twenty-seven agents and his special assistant. Information from the wiretaps, fed hourly to the Oval Office, paid off immediately. By Sunday night, Lyndon Johnson knew which delegates Freedom Democrats were lobbying and which governors Martin Luther King was pushing to lead a floor fight. And thanks to a list Bob Moses had reluctantly given a black congressman, LBJ knew which Credentials Committee members backed the challenge. Now the pressure tightened. Calls went out across America. Judgeships and appointments, loans and promotions still in the making would suddenly vanish if the men and women on that list did not turn their backs on Freedom Democrats. Joseph Rauh kept counting, but to his dismay, he found he had just eleven supporters. Then ten. Then eight.
On Monday, the day the convention was to begin, FBI agents went undercover as NBC reporters. Black informers infiltrated the SNCC/CORE