Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [147]
Chris Williams was neither a delegate nor an official Freedom Democrat, but he had come to Atlantic City to help in any way he could. He had spent the weekend chauffeuring Freedom Democrats, and singing in boisterous meetings at the Union Temple Baptist Church. Though relieved to be out of the blast furnace, he did not even have time to jump in the ocean. There was always another delegate to drive, another meeting to attend. Chris felt frustrated by his limited role, but on Monday morning his restless energy found a focal point.
When dawn broke on August 24, 150 people, some in overalls, some in suits, sat on the Boardwalk outside the convention hall. Most were silent. Many held signs:
SUPPORT THE FREEDOM DEMOCRATS
1964, NOT 1864
STOP HYPOCRISY, START DEMOCRACY
Above the seated crowd, three picket signs bore sketches of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Holding the sign with the picture of his beloved brother stood little Ben Chaney. And alongside the crowd, as if in a museum, Mississippi democracy was on display. A 1950s sedan, gutted and blackened, sat on the trailer that had trucked it from Mississippi to represent the burned Ford wagon. Photos showed sharecroppers’ destitution. The charred bell from the Mt. Zion Church lay in the bed of a pickup labeled “Mississippi Terror Truck.” The Boardwalk sit-in continued all that Monday, growing to include hundreds of people. Vacationers strolled past, turning their heads. A few stopped to talk. “Don’t you understand? ” one couple was told. “You must try. People have died behind the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the least we can do is support them here.” Most walked on, but a few brought food to the vigil—apples, hot dogs, or saltwater taffy.
While the protest continued, LBJ’s fears mounted. “Alabama’s done gone,” he told a friend, “and they tell me that Louisiana and Arkansas are going with them. And I’m afraid it’s going to spread to eight or ten.” With the Credentials Committee promising a decision before Monday evening’s opening gavel, attention shifted to the Pageant Hotel. Located opposite the convention hall, with a towering Miss America crown atop its white facade, the Pageant had become “Atlantic City’s White House.” White House aides and the president’s teenage daughter were spotted in its lobby. Calls from the Oval Office poured into the switchboard. And the likely vice presidential candidate, Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey, rushed in and out of the elevator. The balding, ebullient Humphrey had a job more weighty than any he might assume as vice president. LBJ had ordered him to handle the Freedom Democrats. The prize dangled before him was the vice presidency. “You better talk to Hubert Humphrey,” Johnson told a friend, “because I’m telling you he’s got no future in this party at all if this big war comes off here and the South all walks out and we all get in a helluva mess.”
At 1:40 p.m. on Monday, Humphrey convened a meeting in his suite at the Pageant. To back his plea that Freedom Democrats accept the two-seat compromise, Humphrey had invited several members of the Credentials Committee and a handful of moderate black leaders—Martin Luther King and his assistant, Andrew Young, plus CORE’s James Farmer, and Aaron Henry. But Henry brought two friends, uninvited—Bob Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer. The scene was a study in black and white—black and white faces, black ties and white shirts, black resentment and white rationalization. Arguing from one corner of the suite to the other, the leaders kept at it for three hours. When the compromise came up, Moses softly stated that it was time “for Negroes to speak for Negroes, for Negroes to represent Negroes.” Freedom Democrats, he said, “can accept no less than equal votes at the convention.” Hubert Humphrey fought back. If whites could not also represent Negroes, he said, “Then democracy is not real.”