Thunder of Freedom: Black Leadership and the Transformation of 1960s Mississippi

5. The Congressional Challenge and Marching for Freedom

81 5 The Congressional Challenge and Marching for Freedom January–July 1965 On January 1, 1965, a busload of thirty-eight Holmes people left for Washington, D.C., to participate in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s Congressional Challenge, the culmination of the local and state FDP strategy that had begun in 1963. The Freedom Election during the November 1963 gubernatorial race had demonstrated that blacks would vote if the white system allowed it. The MFDP was challenging the legality of seating the “regular” (white) sixty-eight-member Mississippi delegation to the August 1964 Democratic National Convention. Spearheading the strategy for the Congressional Challenge effort were both Bob Moses, a SNCC and COFO organizer and the designer-director of the Freedom Summer Project, and Guyot, a SNCC and MFDP organizer and leader. Holmes County’s movement had been among the earliest local movements to support the development of both the state and the local FDPs. Guyot, who directed the 1964 Freedom Summer Project in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, had been unable to attend the Democratic National Convention because he had been jailed for registering black voters. Fired up and enthused about the 1965 Washington trip, the local people were able to raise more than six hundred dollars from inside the county to help pay trip expenses, an incredible accomplishment given the poverty-level wages of most residents of the county. A matching amount was sent in by a group of Milwaukeeans interested in helping fund the Holmes trip. 82 WORKING WITH THE PEOPLE While in D.C., our people spoke with U.S. congressmen to gain their support, asking for their votes for the Challenge in the Credentials Committee and on the House floor. They also met with top administration officials—Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, and Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Anthony Celebrezze —to give them a true picture of how those agencies administered their federal programs in Mississippi. At the January 4 opening ceremony of the 1965 congressional session , the MFDP tried, as it had tried with the August convention delegates , to halt the seating of the entire Mississippi delegation elected in November 1964. The MFDP argued that the Mississippi elections were illegal because blacks had not been allowed to vote and that the white victors should not be seated. The group asked for the seating, instead, of the three MFDP congressional candidates, Mrs. Hamer of Mississippi ’s Second Congressional District, Mrs. Devine of the Fourth, and Mrs. Gray of the Fifth. The women had run in the fall statewide Freedom An astute political analyst, Fannie Lou Hamer was a moving speaker who used her powerful face, body, and voice to rally her audience. The Congressional Challenge and Marching for Freedom 83 Elections in which nearly eighty thousand voted. At the exact same time of the voting on the floor of Congress, just outside the building, more than five hundred Mississippi Negroes, including the thirty-eight from Holmes County, were demonstrating. In the end, the MFDP Challenge resolution was defeated, with 246 members of Congress voting against it. Many people were encouraged, however, by the 149 northern members who supported the Challenge with their votes. Bob Moses pointed to the irony that the MFDP “holds mock elections , while the state of Mississippi holds ‘mockeries of elections.’” The formal January 4 Challenge wasn’t over. The U.S. House Committee on Election Procedures was legally bound to examine the voting conditions in Mississippi. Following official protocol, legal teams from each side were allowed forty days to begin the next steps to gather evidence, take depositions , give testimony, and make attacks and counterattacks. The purpose of the MFDP Challenge was also to work toward the passage of a voting rights bill with provisions for new, free elections in the Deep South. Fannie Lou Hamer with Holmes movement leaders. Mrs. Hamer was the bestknown and most-respected MFDP leader. Her courageous acts of civil disobedience to promote voting rights were often met by violent responses from angry whites. Here she speaks at a rally in Holmes County Courthouse. 84 WORKING WITH THE PEOPLE On January 14, the Holmes travelers returned home to continue registration attempts and also to work with some of the one hundred out-ofstate lawyers who came to help the MFDP take depositions throughout the state. The depositions were evidence in testimony form to be presented , up to forty days after the Challenge vote, to...