Reference no: EM133312602

Question: The right of every citizen to vote is still being challenged today. In 1964, even though, by law, Black citizens had the right to vote (Black men, with the "Reconstruction Amendments," and Black women with the 19th amendment in 1920), they were denied that right throughout the South. This was often done through brutal intimidation, and through refusing to register Black citizens, and also through tactics (like failing to place polling places near Black communities) that might not - at first glance - have seemed explicitly racist but that effectively suppressed the Black vote.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) fought to give Blacks equal access to the ballot.

At the 1964 Democratic Convention, President Lyndon Johnson was so concerned that the challenge of the MFDP would split the Democratic Party -either the southern states would bolt, or the northern ones would - that he considered withdrawing from the presidential race. "I do not believe that I can physically and mentally carry the responsibilities of the bomb and the world and the Negroes," he told his friend Walter Reuther. (Taking Charge, p. 532) On the night before the Credentials Committee meeting he confessed he had been unable to sleep and then, while Hamer's speech was being televised, he called an impromptu press conference to bump it off the air.

The question for you: Why was the president so concerned? (Explain the historical context.) What made Hamer's speech particularly powerful?