On The 50^th Anniversary Of The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s Fight To Be Seated At The Democratic National Convention

 

 

 

Frank Jackman:

If one event should curse and destroy the National Democratic Party’s meager reputation as “friends” of black liberation fighters that was the shabby (I am being polite here) treatment of the Fanny Lou Hamer-led Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party  delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention where they were not seated. Although the official all-white Mississippi Democratic Party delegation, publicly committed to Republican Barry Goldwater, was seated. Yeah, I know, politics, Lyndon Baines Johnson and his ilk politics. What else is new.  

Added Frank Jackman comment:  

No mention of Mississippi 50 years ago (and maybe today too) can be complete without Nina Simone’s pithy, searing indictment of hell-hole Mississippi, Mississippi Goddam. (Maybe today she would need to add places like Ferguson, Missouri to her list-damn.) Thanks Nina   

And yet another Frank Jackman comment concerning what was happening in the streets and back forty down in Mississippi:

I initially made the following small remarks honoring the 50^th anniversary of the 1961 Freedom Riders and the remarks then apply here as well. I noted then that I was in high school at the time of the freedom rides and was part of a support group sponsored by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA, then an anti-Soviet Cold War left-liberal organization but very pro-civil rights in the South) that was raising money in order to send more civil rights workers "heading south." By the time of the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign I had just graduated from high school and I was working with the Boston NAACP raising funds and awareness of the struggle down in hell-hole Mississippi. All honor to those who went south and those already there heading toward the danger not away from it. All Honor to those black liberation fighters.

 

*********

NINA SIMONE LYRICS

"Mississippi Goddam"

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin'

Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it!