Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

LBJ, running to win the presidency that fell into his lap, had a chance to seat the integrated delegation, a chance to anoint Freedom Summer’s peace militants as his party’s future. It would have been a perfect origin story for the modern Democrats, a clean break with the segregationist past in favor of young black-led organizers who risked and sometimes lost their lives to gather votes for a party they couldn’t be sure even wanted them. That’s not what happened. Instead, the Democrats stuck with the Dixiecrats, turning their nose up at the sacrifices in Mississippi. When Mississippi organizer Fannie Lou Hamer appeared on the television broadcast to testify about her struggles to register to vote, the president intervened to get the camera off of her. It was a clean stab in the back from the national Democrats, and the bitter meeting determined the shape of America’s own decolonization struggle.