Dukakis Should Recall Errors of ’64 and Show Blacks That the System Works for Them

With the selection of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) resolving the question of the Democratic vice presidential nomination, negotiations between Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson may grow increasingly delicate in these days leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. More than before, people may ask: What does Jackson want? Searching for an answer to that question, Dukakis would be wise to reflect back to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.

In that year President Lyndon B. Johnson was unopposed for the party’s nomination. The only “messy” item on the convention agenda was the resolution of a bold claim made by an organized group of Mississippi blacks--the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP claimed that it, rather than the all-white delegation sent to the convention by Mississippi’s regular Democrats, was entitled to represent that state at the convention. Not only did the MFDP have right on its side--the regular Mississippi Democrats were proudly segregationist--it also offered its unqualified support to Johnson, in contrast to the regular Democrats who threatened to betray Johnson by bolting the convention and endorsing his Republican opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Members of the MFDP had risked life and livelihood in forming their party. Many had fought for civil rights for years in Mississippi. They had fought with unsung heroism against a powerful state government that used police-state tactics to suppress them and had been encouraged by party liberals, including Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, to believe that the national Democratic Party stood for justice and would now honor their efforts by seating them and ejecting the regular Democrats. Even the most battle-hardened and cynical black leaders allowed themselves to believe that the system could work for them, that even poor and powerless Mississippi sharecroppers could have a voice in American democracy and that the national Democratic Party would do the right thing.

But it didn’t work out that way. Johnson calculated that he stood to lose more by alienating Southern whites than he stood to gain by placating Southern blacks. In the course of several days of heavy-handed political maneuvering, the MFDP’s challenge was turned back by an L.B.J.-directed task force spearheaded by the presumed vice presidential nominee,Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey, and Minnesota Atty. Gen. Walter F. Mondale. The white liberals offered the blacks a compromise--token representation at the 1964 convention and promises of full recognition in 1968. It was, to the blacks, a familiar nostrum:Your cause is just, they were being told, but you must wait. You must moderate your demands for justice now in the interest of “discipline” and “party unity” and “winning in November.”

Johnson did, of course, win in November, and he was perhaps the best President whom black America has ever had. It’s doubtful, however, that he would have lost to Goldwater by acceding to the MFDP in Atlantic City, and the ill consequences of his refusal to do so were lasting and significant. At the moment the MFDP lost its challenge, many of the best and brightest black leaders gave up on the system. They concluded that there was no point in working within the Democratic Party or the electoral process, and they turned to more militant remedies to their grievances or dropped out of politics altogether.

In a larger sense the Democratic Party did align itself with the goals of the civil-rights movement and has thus been the party that best represents black aspirations. The party has paid the price for doing so in a loss of support among whites, especially in the South, which surely has contributed to the party’s loss of four of the last five presidential elections. Fear that they cannot afford any further erosion of white support no doubt leaves party leaders leery of seeming to endorse Jackson’s positions.

But not to embrace Jackson carries an even graver risk. Like the MFDP in 1964, Jackson followers in 1988 have dared to believe in the system. For them to be turned back now would shatter that belief and perhaps foster deep despair and bitterness. If not this year, when? they ask. Will America ever fulfill its promise of equality for all? Dukakis must demonstrate that the system does work for black Americans now, in 1988, not promise that it will do so sometime in the future. Black Americans know that ever-receding future only too well. If Dukakis does not adequately rise to this challenge, we risk losing another generation of black America’s best and brightest--and this is a loss that neither the Democratic Party nor America can afford.