Trying to Paper It Over

Harry Byrd was absent. So were Senators Dick Russell and Herman Talmadge, Russell Long and Allen Ellen-der, John Stennis and Jim Eastland, John Sparkman and Lister Hill. A full third of the South's Democratic Governors also stayed away from Atlantic City.

Most of the missing had explanations, including family illness, "previous commitments" and "pressing business." Some of the excuses were valid. But the fact remained that virtually none of the South's senior Democratic politicians were on hand. And for the first time within recent memory, the South played no role of any importance at a Democratic Convention.

Morality v. Legality. That was just the way Lyndon Johnson wanted it: from where he stood, the South could only cause trouble. There was, for example, the case of the Alabama delegation: it had come to Convention Hall determined not to support the national Democratic ticket in November unless some of Governor George Wallace's segregationist notions were written into the party platform.

And then there was Mississippi. By every accounting, the state's 46-member delegation had been legally selected. But it was all-white and all-segregationist. In view of this, civil rights workers both within and from outside Mississippi formed a last-minute party, called the Freedom Democrats, selected a mostly Negro delegation, sent it to Atlantic City demanding that it be seated in place of the regular delegation. The Freedom Democratic argument was based on morality, not legality. Cried Washington Lawyer Joseph Rauh Jr., in arguing the group's case before the convention Credentials Committee: "Last year Mississippi's Governor Paul Johnson went up and down the state saying that the N.A.A.C.P. stood for 'niggers, alligators, apes, coons and possums.' Are you going to seat a delegation sent by a man like that?"

What President Johnson was interested in was heading off a convention floor fight over either Alabama or Mississippi. The Alabama case was easily solved. The convention decreed that no Alabaman could be seated without first signing a pledge of loyalty to the national ticket; only ten of the 53 delegates did, and the rest were refused their seats.

Like An Ocean Wave. Mississippi was trickier, and to handle its case Johnson placed none other than Hubert Humphrey in charge of negotiations. Hubert warned aides that a floor fight must be avoided at all costs: "If it gets on the floor it will roll like an ocean wave--br'ooom!" The compromise required that the regular Mississippi delegates sign loyalty oaths, provided that the Freedom delegates could sit as non-voting "honored guests," with two members voting as "delegates at large," and set up machinery enabling the 1968 convention to reject any state delegation based on racial discrimination in party affairs.

The solution pleased neither faction. Most of the regular Mississippians refused to sign their pledges, did not get seated. The Freedom Democrats scuffled around, spending most of their time shouting into ever-ready television mikes. Throughout the convention, civil rights demonstrators milled around outside the hall.

President Johnson nonetheless professed himself proudly pleased--at least the Southern rebellion had been limited, so far, to the states of Alabama and Mississippi. But as events in Philadelphia would soon prove (see following story), the nation's racial strife cannot be papered over--either in the South or the North.

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