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Writer's picturePrejudice Awareness

60 Years Ago, Courage Confronted Racism at the Democratic Convention


Aaron Henry, chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation, speaks before the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 22, 1964. (Photo by Warren K Leffler/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)


WHEN VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS takes the stage in Chicago on Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention to accept her party’s nomination for president of the United States, I will raise a glass to my grandmother from Newton, Mississippi and remember again the year she stood up to powerful, undemocratic white men.

Thelma McMullan arrived as an alternate delegate at the 1964 Democratic convention in Atlantic City. She was a 57-year-old white woman from Mississippi. Her husband, Milton, 60 and white, was an official delegate of the Mississippi Democratic Party.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was the nominee. Thelma supported Johnson. Milton did not. He and other white Mississippi delegates passed the following resolution before the convention: “We oppose, condemn and deplore [President Johnson’s] Civil Rights Act of 1964. . . . We believe in separation of the races in all phases of our society.”


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