Freedom at the Democratic National Convention
This pamphlet was created by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) with support from the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) sometime before August 1964 to educate the public to ensure proper representation is at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). According to Stanford, “The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was a coalition of national and regional organizations engaged in civil rights activities in Mississippi.” In summary, they organized some of the biggest civil rights groups in Mississippi to have a unified front in civil rights causes. They brought together the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They focus on attaining voter’s rights and increasing education on voting. They were the group to organize the Freedom Summer project. They showed their support for the MFDP and helped them reach members of the community.
The MFDP was created with the COFO to challenge the democratic party in Mississippi. According to the SNCC website, this was because “’Dixiecrats’ as southern Democrats were known, dominated state governments. A web of law, intimidation, official and unofficial force, and violence terrorizing Blacks seeking voting rights, kept Black people from voting.” This push for essentially an all-white democratic party caused the COFO to push back. They created the MFDP as an opposing party that was free to all with the hopes that they would be the representative democratic party of Mississippi and not the “Dixiecrats.”
The place the MFDP planned to challenge them was at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). In the pamphlet shown, they describe the DNC as “...a very important meeting because people in the Democratic Party choose the person they want to run for President of the United States.” That is exactly what it is too, Democrats from all over the country come together and representatives from each state speak. The COFO wanted to be sure that there was proper representation of all of Mississippi’s community in this major decision.
As explained earlier, the MFDP and COFO planned to challenge the existing democratic party in Mississippi. One of the ways they did this was with pamphlets like this one. They would mass produce these pamphlets to get the word out about their goals and raise support.
The front of the pamphlet does not focus on its content but trusted names of community leaders. It has COFO on the front so readers will know it is from a good source and something they need to pay attention to. It has MFDP and black community members in an important meeting. It associates the word freedom with this image encouraging readers that to gain this freedom involves action and that is what these two names stand for.
To reach the most amount of people they made the language easy to understand, did not flood these pamphlets with dense text, and they made sure to give the reader the basic information they needed to act. The three inside panels educate the reader on the democratic meetings in Mississippi leading up to the DNC. It lets the reader know that this is an event that starts locally and continues to become the national convention. It lets the reader know to show that this critical event can be acted upon at a local level. When breaking down the information it spaces the information out and refrains from using language that is too technical. This way, anyone can pick up the pamphlet and be educated. The information presented is not locked behind a demoralizing wall of jargon. It also provides images breaking down the different levels to help visualize the scale and how action on any level will be meaningful to the overall goal.
In the back two panels of the pamphlet, the MFDP is transparent about what they want to do, why, and how the reader can help. The first back panel describes candidates of both the current democratic party and the MFDP. MFDP lays out candidates from both parties to put their names in the readers minds when deciding who to put in power. The MFDP puts their candidate names out there to show that they have trusted community leaders heading the movement. These candidates will push to represent freedom for all Mississippians. MFDP uses the candidates currently being put in power to show why action is needed and why it is for their candidates. They list out the names of known democrats that do not support freedom for Black Americans.
On the final panel, the MFDP lays out their plans for the convention. That they will work to put their candidates up for vote to represent all Mississippians and not just the white population. They ask for public support and vote of their candidates. They end the pamphlet by putting their contact information so that readers can clarify any doubts they may have or take immediate action.
This pamphlet circulated in the summer of 1964 before the DNC happened in August of that same year. It was passed around during the Freedom Summer movement to help with Black American voter's rights on the national level. In the pamphlet they explicitly state the problem with voting laws: “Why do we have a [MFDP}? Because the Mississippi Democratic Party is only for a few white people who have registered to vote under unfair voting laws.” Their goal was to help with the movement in Mississippi by making sure to remove any candidates that would take away or halt progress in Black voting rights.
Outside Sources
“Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) | the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.” Kinginstitute.stanford.edu, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/council-federated-organizations-cofo. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024.
“Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).” SNCC Digital Gateway, snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/alliances-relationships/mfdp/.