Encounter 31 · 31 of 42 · 22 August 1964
Is this America
On 22 August 1964 Fannie Lou Hamer told a credentials committee what Winona had done. The networks cut away.
Atlantic City, New Jersey
A stranger does not arrive knowing why this woman was in Atlantic City. In 1962, in Ruleville, she went with SNCC to try to register in Indianola. She was thrown off the B. D. Marlowe plantation for refusing to withdraw the application. White men shot into the house where she stayed in town.
In June 1963, returning from a voter-registration workshop, she was taken off a bus in Winona. In the jail, she later said, she was ordered to lie down and was beaten with a blackjack. That beating is not atmosphere for 1964. It is what she came to say.
1964I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?Fannie Lou Hamer, credentials committee, 22 August 1964. The sentence is on tape. It is not a later polish.
Johnson called a press conference so the networks would cut away. The testimony ran later, in full. A compromise of two at-large seats was offered. She refused. “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats.” The regular Mississippi delegation walked anyway.
1964
The hall
A challenge, not a plea for atmosphere. They were not seated as they asked.
1968
The later rules
The next convention changed how delegations were seated. That is afterward. It does not make 1964 a success by delay.1968 seating rules are not a 1964 success. The hall that week is the chair.
A true sentence is not made into a speech that fixed a party. It did not.
What is a seat worth if it is offered instead of a hearing?
Private. No one else will see it.
Source
- primary01 · American Archive of Public BroadcastingHamer’s credentials committee testimony, 22 August 1964.
- institutional02 · SNCC Digital Gateway, Fannie Lou HamerRuleville 1962, eviction, Winona June 1963, MFDP, Atlantic City. Institutional biography from movement records.Record
Atlantic City · 1964 · a testimony they tried to cover