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[[bold]] TOWARD INDEPENDENT POLITICAL POWER

LAWRENCE GUYOT AND MIKE THELWELL

It is not possible here to go into the machinations of the leadership of the National Democratic Party which managed to avoid any vote of the convention on the issue. The important fact that emerged was that the leadership of the Democratic party-which is to say the political leadership of the nation, at this time-was not prepared to end or even amend its relationship of fraternal coexistence with Mississippi racism. The public relations gesture of offering the MFDP delegation two seats "at large" was at best a slap on the wrists of the "regulars" and a pat on the head of Mississippi's Negroes. It made no pretense of meeting the claims of the MFDP delegation for representation for Mississippi's black population.

One side effect of the MFDP delegation's rejection of the token offer should be mentioned. This is the response of truly surprising vindictiveness-scarcely disguised contempt for the members of the MFDP delegation-with which "liberals" in the National Democratic Party greeted our rejection of the compromise. Inherent in the charge that the delegation was "manipulated" to reject this gesture is the notion that the members of the delegation who were present at the risk of jail, loss of livelihood, and even life, were somehow unable to recognize that they had been deprived by a vote by the full convention, and were being asked to accept a meaningless gesture that meant no change in the conditions that had brought them to Atlantic City in protest.

Back in Mississippi people across the state were watching on every available television set and saw that the "system" was vulnerable. That week of TV coverage did more than a month of mass meetings in showing people that there was nothing necessary and eternal about
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This is the second of a two-part article on The Politics of Survival in Mississippi. The first installment appeared in the Spring issue of FREEDOMWAYS (Volume 6, Number 2). The authors are leaders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

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