CHICAGO — On Aug. 22, 1964, Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer delivered an iconic speech at the Democratic National Convention, taking the party to task for its failure to support voting rights for Black Americans and its refusal to grant her integrated delegation seats at the convention.
Thursday is the 60th anniversary of those remarks. And on that day, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to make history, delivering a convention speech as the first Black woman and first Asian American person to accept a major party’s presidential nomination.
If elected, Harris will also be the first female president.
Hamer was a leader of the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was fighting to be seated at the 1964 convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in place of the all-white delegation from the state.
But then-President Lyndon Johnson, who needed those Southern Democratic votes, was against them.
The credentials committee offered the party two seats at the convention as a compromise. But Hubert Humphrey, who was trying to get the vice presidential nomination, said Johnson would not let Hamer get one of those spots.
“The president has said he will not let that illiterate woman speak on the floor of the Democratic convention,” Humphrey said.
Johnson even called a news conference to try to divert network coverage away from Hamer's remarks. That plan backfired; TV networks later aired her testimony in full in the coveted prime-time hours.
Hamer's vivid testimony about fighting for the right to vote included sharing the physical violence she and others had faced in that battle. She talked about being locked up by white law enforcement officers after she had attended a voter registration workshop, and how they ordered other Black prisoners to beat her.
"All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens," Hamer said in her speech. "And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"
The historic nature of Harris’ candidacy, and the civil rights leaders who helped pave the way for her to stand on the stage Thursday, is on the minds of attendees at the convention in Chicago this week — some of whom were also here eight years ago celebrating the history-making candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
Wendell Pierce, an actor well-known for his roles on “The Wire” and “Treme,” is at the convention this week and raises money for the campaign. He said Hamer, and the 60th anniversary of her speech, was at the front of his mind this week.
“Now we are going to nominate a Black woman to this party and change American politics forever. And I’m going to be a puddle of tears, because I’m going to think about all of those folks who made the ultimate sacrifice because they believed in democracy — who died, and in their last moments, said, 'I hope I’m not dying in vain,’” Pierce told NBC News.
Leah Daughtry, a political strategist with close ties to Harris' office, paid tribute to Hamer, calling her "divine" during a brunch for Black women hosted by a group of women who are longtime leaders in the Democratic Party and call themselves the "Colored Girls."
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., paid tribute to Hamer in her remarks Monday on the first night of the Democratic convention, saying she was 22 in 1964.
"She didn't get the outcome she was hoping for in Atlantic City, but you can bet that when the official Mississippi delegation was seated at the convention four years later, Fannie Lou Hamer was sitting there with them," Waters said, adding, "Here we are, 60 years later, at another Democratic convention with ... Kamala Harris as our party's nominee."
And in an interview with MSNBC on Monday night, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison invoked the contributions of Black Americans in getting to this moment, mentioning Hamer, Frederick Douglass, the slaves who built the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
"This is more than just beating Donald Trump. ... This is addressing Fannie Lou Hamer, who, 60 years ago, testified to the DNC Credentials Committee because she couldn't be a part of the Mississippi delegation. It was an all-white delegation, and she said she's sick and tired of being sick and tired. Well, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired of people coming after our freedom, coming after our rights."
The Mississippi delegation is also radically different now. When it introduced itself during the roll call Tuesday night, its Democratic Party chair, state Rep. Cheikh Taylor, said, "We are proud of our heroes such as Fannie Lou Hamer."
