For a Voice and the Vote: My Journey with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

by Lisa Anderson Todd

Overview

During the summer of 1964, hundreds of American college students descended on Mississippi to help the state's African American citizens register to vote. Student organizers, volunteers, and community members canvassed black neighborhoods to organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a group that sought to give a voice to black Mississippians and demonstrate their will to vote in the face of terror and intimidation.

In For a Voice and the Vote, author Lisa Anderson Todd gives a fascinating insider's account of her experience volunteering in Greenville, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer, when she participated in organizing the MFDP. Innovative and integrated, the party provided political education, ran candidates for office, and offered participation in local and statewide meetings for blacks who were denied the vote. For Todd, it was an exciting, dangerous, and life-changing experience. Offering the first full account of the group's five days in Atlantic City, the book draws on primary sources, oral histories, and the author's personal interviews of individuals who were supporters of the MFDP in 1964.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813147161
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	06/29/2021
Series:	Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	450
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lisa Anderson Todd (1942-2015) served as a federal administrative judge for over twenty-two years on the Board of Contract Appeals at NASA and on the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals at the Department of Defense.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

1 In Atlantic City for the Democratic Convention 5

2 My Life before Mississippi 13

3 Mississippi, 1963: Keeping the Waters Troubled 23

4 On to Greensboro, North Carolina, and Back to Cornell 55

5 Planning for the Summer Project 75

6 Orientation: How the Student Volunteers Were Prepared 95

7 June 21, 1964 115

8 Living as a Volunteer in Mississippi, 1964 131

9 My New Politics 177

10 Early Work on the Convention Challenge 209

11 Lyndon Johnson: The Formidable President 221

12 One Woman in Atlantic City 239

13 Sunday in Atlantic City 251

14 Humphrey's Pleading on Monday 265

15 Reuther's Manipulation on Tuesday 281

16 The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Turns to Protest 315

17 Wednesday: Persuasion Fails 325

18 Victory or Defeat 339

Epilogue 359

Acknowledgments 373

Appendix A Challenge of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party 377

Appendix B Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Delegates 381

Notes 385

Bibliography 437

Index 439

Editorial Reviews

In For a Voice and the Vote Lisa Anderson Todd skillfully combines her personal story—as a college student volunteering for the 1964 Freedom Summer project—with a scholarly account of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's challenge at the Democratic Convention that August. This is an engaging, thoughtful account of history that we all need to know. Black Mississippians working with young people from across the country took their demand for voting rights and political power to the national stage. Though their plea for recognition was rejected, their effort stands as a remarkable moment in democratic promise and it changed fundamentally changed our nation.

Emilye Crosby

The challenge by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to the seating of the regular lily-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention has long been recognized as one of the most dramatic and pivotal moments of that most dramatic and pivotal of decades. But until now, no book length treatment of the challenge was available. Happily, Lisa Anderson Todd—herself a volunteer in Mississippi that summer—has now filled that void with her compelling, personal account of those five consequential days in Atlantic City and the impact they had on SNCC, the Democratic Party, and, by extension, the country as a whole.

Doug McAdam

Lisa Anderson Todd's For a Voice and the Vote is an engrossing memoir of a seminal moment in post-World War II United States history. This work is a heartfelt, insightful examination of the challenges, complexities, triumphs, and defeats involved in the arduous struggle to transform conditions in Mississippi, the Democratic Party, and the United States.

Timothy N. Thurber

For A Voice and a Vote is, quite simply, the most comprehensive and persuasive account of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's historic challenge to the state's white supremacist delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in 1964. It is also a poignant and provocative memoir of Freedom Summer in Mississippi, seen through the eyes of a young northern white volunteer. Lisa Anderson Todd—participant, observer, and serious scholar—has written an extraordinary book, required reading for all those who care about the promise and possibilities of democracy.

John Dittmer

"Lisa Anderson Todd's For a Voice and the Vote is an engrossing memoir of a seminal moment in post-World War II United States history. This work is a heartfelt, insightful examination of the challenges, complexities, triumphs, and defeats involved in the arduous struggle to transform conditions in Mississippi, the Democratic Party, and the United States." — Timothy N. Thurber, author of Republicans and Race: The GOP's Frayed Relationship with African Americans, 1945-1974

"The challenge by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to the seating of the regular lily-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention has long been recognized as one of the most dramatic and pivotal moments of that most dramatic and pivotal of decades. But until now, no book length treatment of the challenge was available. Happily, Lisa Anderson Todd — herself a volunteer in Mississippi that summer—has now filled that void with her compelling, personal account of those five consequential days in Atlantic City and the impact they had on SNCC, the Democratic Party, and, by extension, the country as a whole." — Doug McAdam, Deeply Divided: Racial Politics and Social Movements in Postwar America

" For A Voice and a Vote is, quite simply, the most comprehensive and persuasive account of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's historic challenge to the state's white supremacist delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in 1964. It is also a poignant and provocative memoir of Freedom Summer in Mississippi, seen through the eyes of a young northern white volunteer. Lisa Anderson Todd—participant, observer, and serious scholar—has written an extraordinary book, required reading for all those who care about the promise and possibilities of democracy." — John Dittmer, Professor Emeritus of History, DePauw University

"In For a Voice and the Vote Lisa Anderson Todd skillfully combines her personal story—as a college student volunteering for the 1964 Freedom Summer project — with a scholarly account of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's challenge at the Democratic Convention that August. This is an engaging, thoughtful account of history that we all need to know. Black Mississippians working with young people from across the country took their demand for voting rights and political power to the national stage. Though their plea for recognition was rejected, their effort stands as a remarkable moment in democratic promise and it changed fundamentally changed our nation." — Emilye Crosby, editor of Civil Rights History from the Ground Up

From the Publisher

11/01/2014
An account of the 1964 Freedom Summer from a former volunteer and later federal judge.

Library Journal