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By Root 1792 0

democracy could work, even in Mississippi. SNCC had stockpiled reams of affidavits chronicling every assault. SNCC and Moses had sued county registrars and the federal government. Moses, his coworkers, and his summer disciples had visited thousands of shacks, preaching democracy. In its name, blood had been shed all summer. Three men murdered and buried beneath a dam. Torsos washing up in the river. Churches reduced to ashes. Heading to Atlantic City, Moses had not allowed himself to be swept up in the euphoria. But after Hamer’s speech, after all the Boardwalk rallies, he had shed his caution. The Democratic Party would not refuse Freedom Democrats, he said, “if they really understand what’s at stake.” Now America had slapped Bob Moses in the face. Now he saw what he had perhaps suspected all along—that naked coercion, arm twisting, and sneaky backroom deals were also “the stuff democracy is made of.”

Certain that Hubert Humphrey had called Freedom Democrats to his suite to keep them from arguing their case where it mattered, Moses shouted, “You cheated!” Then he stood, strode out of the crowded suite, and slammed the door.

The echo was the sound of SNCC slamming the door on the American political process. Moses soon declared he would never again trust politics. Other SNCCs agreed. James Forman: “Atlantic City was a powerful lesson. . . . No longer was there any hope, among those who still had it, that the federal government would change the situation in the Deep South.” Ella Baker: “The kids tried the established methods, and they tried at the expense of their lives. . . . But they were not willing to wait and they had paid a high price. So they began to look for other answers.” Freedom Democrats described their own dismay.

“Stokely,” Hartman Turnbow asked. “So this is what y’all calls democracy?”

“No, Mr. Turnbow,” Carmichael replied. “It’s politics—as usual.”

“Well now, sure t’ain’t the same thing, now is it? ”

“No, suh, it sure ain’t.”

At 4:00 p.m., when demonstrators seated on the Boardwalk learned that the two-seat compromise had been approved, they stood in silence. A call had just gone back to SNCC headquarters in Greenwood, Freedom Democrats asking for the latest violent incidents so “they can use the info in pleading their case.” But suddenly it became clear that no evidence—not four filing cabinets filled with names, not stacks of affidavits, not the most heart-searing testimony—would do any good. As they stood in the breeze off the ocean, so far removed from cotton fields and Piney Woods, volunteers and SNCC staffers felt the same gut-wrenching fury they had known each day in Mississippi. Tourists passed. Waves crashed on the beach. Seagulls circled overhead. It was August 25. A week remained before college classes absorbed volunteers, but the summer that had begun in innocence on an Ohio campus, burst onto front pages, then trudged on through fear and Freedom Songs, finally bringing all its idealism before a national audience, was over.

That evening on the convention floor, the compromise was explained and adopted in less than a minute. With tears in his eyes, Joseph Rauh, fresh from a meeting where Freedom Democrats formally voted down the compromise, marched to the podium to turn in two badges labeled “at large.” But the compromise included more than two seats. It also promised that future conventions would never again seat all-white delegations. (They never did.) And it required Mississippi’s official delegation to swear allegiance to the Democratic ticket. Mississippi delegates were outraged. Their state had been “cowhided and horsewhipped,” subjected to “cheap, degrading insults.” How dare they be required to prove themselves loyal Democrats! On orders phoned in by Governor Johnson, delegates began packing. Since Reconstruction, the governor declared, Mississippi had owed a great debt to the Democratic Party. Now, “that debt is paid in full.” And he had “no intention of ever working for President Johnson at any time.” The convention continued with four loyal Mississippi delegates seated—alone in