American History

Intro. : A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party emerged from voter registration efforts in the summer of 1964. One of its goals was to present a competing delegation to the Convention in Atlantic City in August. When the two groups arrived, the Party was in a quandary. Here was one group claiming the moral the high ground; some of its members, directly touched by the bloody Mississippi violence of that summer. The other group represented the vast majority of white Mississippians most of whom were opposed to black progress. Even party liberals, such as Senator Hubert Humphrey were conflicted.

Intro. : A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: When he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson, told one of his aides, Joseph Califano, “I think we’ve delivered the South to the Republican Party for your lifetime and mine.” While his accurate prediction was decades off the mark, the process that led to that Democratic Party implosion was confirmed at the quadrennial party gathering in Atlantic City that summer. One of the persons responsible for the party’s moral triumph, but steady political decline, was a soft-spoken, intellectual schoolteacher from New York named Bob Moses.

Intro. : A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Hubert Horatio Humphrey was a classic liberal, economically and socially. He led the charge to firmly establish the national Democratic Party on the side of African Americans in their quest for freedom. At the Convention in 1948 Humphrey argued for a much stronger Civil Rights plank in the platform and prevailed. This angered many southerners who felt that any progress by blacks was a threat to white supremacy. Led by then Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, many southerners bolted the convention. Thurmond ran for President, but the election was Harry Truman’s in 1948. The southerner, however, would have his revenge

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.Content: When the Democrats assembled in the decaying resort of Atlantic City in the late summer, the outcome was never in doubt. President Johnson would be the nominee. The party was still reeling from the assassination shock of the previous year and would go on to crush the Republicans in an electoral tsunami that would sweep away the conservative challenger Barry Goldwater and dozens of GOP congressmen and Senators. Yet, the events of that August week would seal the fate of the Democrats and make possible the Republican revolution that transformed national politics three decades later.