Three Women Who Dared the House To Eject Five Colleagues on Principle : Civil rights: In 1965, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the state's delegation. It lost, but the lessons are still valuable.

By Kay Mills

Oct. 14, 1990 12 AM PT

Kay Mills, an Opinion editor , has just completed a year as a Rockefeller Foundation civil - rights fellow at the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute

Twenty-five years ago this fall, every member of the U.S. House of Representatives faced a critical test on race and politics. Did enough of them believe in civil rights to throw out five colleagues from Mississippi? Or was their fear of such a precedent so great that they would turn their backs on the blatantly unconstitutional denial of voting rights that had allowed the five to be elected?

In 1965, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the seating of the five members on the ground that black people had been unable to participate freely in their election. Today, this challenge carried by three women--Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Annie Devine of Canton and Victoria Gray of Hattiesburg--has become an almost-forgotten footnote of history.

But their act should not be forgotten, both for the individual heroism it represented and for the step toward fuller black representation that it became. Furthermore, racism still plays a role in American politics and undermines America’s professions of equality. It is thus important to look back at the earlier effort to eradicate this blight.

Mississippi for decades denied black people the right to register and then vote. Even into the 1960s, its registrars closed their offices when black applicants showed up or made them interpret arcane sections of the state constitution that an Ivy League lawyer could not understand. Nightriders shot into homes and killed those who dared object; law officers beat civil-rights workers, including Hamer.

Even the national Democratic Party copped out by refusing to reject outright the all-white Mississippi delegation at its 1964 convention. Instead, the party said discrimination was wrong and no one could do it the next time around.

The Freedom Democratic Party, organized to confront discrimination, decided that it would take on the Mississippi congressional delegation. Its lawyers--Arthur Kinoy, William Kunstler, Ben Smith and Morton Stavis--found that not only could the House determine its members’ qualifications, it also had to grant subpoena power to the challengers to gather evidence. Volunteer attorneys swarmed into Mississippi and heard public testimony from prospective black voters denied their rights and from the state officials responsible.

Back in Washington, the House first took up the challenge on the opening day of its 1965 congressional session. As members walked through the underground tunnel toward chambers, they passed black Mississippians standing quietly, with dignity, every 10 feet along the way. Sharecroppers. Farmers. Maids. Cooks. A few teachers, but mainly working people. “They had no signs. That wasn’t allowed,” recalled organizer Mike Thelwell. “They just stood there. It was very impressive. . . . You could see it having an account.”

The House seated the five Mississippians, including the powerful Jamie L. Whitten, who still chairs the House Appropriations Committee. But the vote, 276-149, showed far more support for the challenge than anticipated. The MFDP pursued its case through the spring and summer with the House committee to which it had been referred for resolution.

Hamer, Devine and Gray spent much of their time lobbying House members in Washington or traveling the country to drum up support. At one point, the House clerk stubbornly refused to publish the documentation the lawyers had turned up in Mississippi, so Gray led a delegation to try to see him. She and her group were jailed when they refused to leave the Capitol at closing time.

The pressure was on Congress to enact stronger protections for black voters. Police violence against demonstrators in Selma, Ala., that year intensified the drive for the Voting Rights Act, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed on Aug. 6. In that landmark legislation, Congress found its out with respect to the challenge. More than one House member would acknowledge Mississippi’s horrid conditions, predict that the Voting Rights Act would change them and therefore vote against the challenge.

Timidity marked the liberal community’s response. The Freedom Democrats were proving to be a party no outsider could control. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the main lobbying force in Washington, was reluctant to step out in front until the closing days of the challenge; the Americans for Democratic Action opposed it early on. The lawyer who had represented the black Mississippians at the 1964 Democratic convention, Joseph Rauh, opposed them in this effort.

The women hadn’t been on the November, 1964, ballot as candidates--so Rauh found himself agreeing with the Mississippi congressmen that they couldn’t legally be challengers. But Mississippi had played its own version of Catch-22. The women hadn’t gotten on the ballot because state officials refused to put them there, even though they petitioned to run and had the legally required number of signatures.

The House committee hearing the challenge met in September in a closed session. Hamer put the matter bluntly: “You gentlemen should know that the Negroes make up 58% of the potential voters of the Second Congressional District. This means that if Negroes were allowed to vote freely, I could be sitting up here with you right now as a congresswoman. . . . I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be part of helping set the Negro free in Mississippi.”

Before the final debate began, Rep. William Fitts Ryan (D-N.Y.), the chief congressional sponsor of the challenge, along with California Democrats Don Edwards and Phil Burton, escorted Hamer, Devine and Gray onto the floor of the House at the invitation of Speaker John W. McCormack. They were the first black women ever seated in the House, the first black Mississippians since 1882. The power of the Voting Rights Act notwithstanding, they would be the last black Mississippians seated until 1986, when attorney Mike Espy won in the Delta district Hamer might have represented.

The overriding issue, Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.) told his colleagues during the debate, is a moral one. “Can we support continued service in this body of persons elected by what must be frankly recognized as a perversion and misuse of our electoral processes?” Roosevelt answered no when the vote was taken. But the yeas had it, 228-143. Politics-as-usual won again.

Hamer died in 1977. Gray, now Adams, lives in Petersburg, Va., and remains an outspoken critic of discrimination. Devine still tries to help the young people of Canton, a small town northeast of Jackson.

Now, as then, moral leadership--”from the White House to the doghouse,” to use Devine’s phrase--seems absent from the political system as America’s blacks confront racism, drugs, unemployment, crime, homelessness and poor schools. The problem has turned from the blatant political discrimination practiced in Mississippi in the early 1960s. Racism today ranges from random violence in the streets to subtle slurs in the workplace and not-so-subtle use of code words in election campaigns.

People can stand up and be counted, and stay “stop it.” Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, Victoria Gray and their allies did that 25 years ago. Their history must remain part of our collective memory so others will be inspired to carry forward their efforts.