60 years after Democrats denied Fannie Lou Hamer a convention seat, Harris is set to make history
Kamala Harris is set to address the convention exactly 60 years after the civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer delivered her powerful convention speech about voting rights and representation.
CHICAGO — On Aug. 22, 1964, Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer delivered an iconic speech at the Democratic National Convention, taking the party to task for its failure to support voting rights for Black Americans and its refusal to grant her integrated delegation seats at the convention.
Thursday is the 60th anniversary of those remarks. And on that day, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to make history, delivering a convention speech as the first Black woman and first Asian American person to accept a major party’s presidential nomination.
If elected, Harris will also be the first female president.
Hamer was a leader of the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was fighting to be seated at the 1964 convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in place of the all-white delegation from the state.
But then-President Lyndon Johnson, who needed those Southern Democratic votes, was against them.
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