Another Convention Memory!

While listening to the radio the other day I heard the name “Fannie Lou Hammer,” which reminded me that I had also been to the Democratic National Convention in 1964.  It was held in Atlantic City, near the end of the city’s years as a major seaside resort for people from the East Coast, and before the invasion of casinos and the movie Atlantic City with Sarandon and Lancaster.   Even then, the hotels were becoming seedy.  My family had gone there yearly in the late fifties and sixties, and I still remember the hotels with elevator operators and of course the Boardwalk with the Mr. Peanut character and the Steel Pier and Million Dollar Pier.

 The Convention was held in “Convention Hall”, now known as “Boardwalk Hall” and home of the Miss America Pageant as well as numerous sporting events including a Joe Frazier v. George Foreman fight.

The Philadelphia Democratic party recruited young people to be bussed to a youth rally at the Hall.  I remember walking onto the Boardwalk and into the Hall, and seeing the big sign for Barry Goldwater on one of the columns that read, “In your Heart you Know he is Right.” Someone had added, “Yes Extreme Right.”

Ms. Hammer made an appearance, but I don’t remember it being in the Hall.  She is one of the almost forgotten heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, a sharecropper who had tried to register to vote in Mississippi more than twenty times and had been beaten.  She had been hospitalized for surgery and was involuntarily sterilized.  She had organized a slate of Black delegates to replace the racist Mississippi delegation, which systematically had excluded Black people even though Mississippi had a substantial number.  It was just a few months after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a year before the Voting Rights Act.

Inside the Hall, I remember our delegation being right to the side of the podium.  I remember seeing Paul Newman, not fifteen feet away and his bright blue eyes.  Vice Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey came to speak and asked all of us to line the streets to welcome President Johnson, who had succeeded to the Presidency the previous year because of JFK’s assassination.  Vic Damon (The Velvet Fog for Seinfeld fans) appeared and sang, as did Peter, Paul and Mary.

It’s been years since I thought about that very crowded day and two bus rides, even though I had just written about two other conventions a few years later.  It’s funny how things start jarring one’s memories at this stage of life.