CHICAGO —As the sun went down on Thursday and the sprawling stadium behind her filled with thousands of people gathered for the final night of the Democratic National Convention, Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman stood on a sidewalk and spoke to a few dozen supporters and journalists about her inspiration from 60 years ago.
“They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer,” Roman said, referring to the civil rights activist who famously challenged the 1964 DNC. “Shunned for her courage … She paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.”
“This historic moment is full of promise, but only if we stand together. Our party’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite,” Romman continued. “Let’s fight for the policies long overdue — from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a cease-fire in Gaza.”
A coalition of antiwar DNC delegates, Democratic lawmakers and progressive groups had hoped she would deliver those words from the convention’s main stage. The alliance had sought speaking time during the convention for a Palestinian American who could highlight their views on the war in Gaza. But on Wednesday, Democratic Party officials said no. And they stood by that decision, even after an all-night sit-in and even as public pressure mounted on Thursday.
On its face, the DNC’s denial was a defeat for the national movement that opposes President Joe Biden’s policy of overwhelming support for Israel’s deadly offensive in Gaza and wants the party’s presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, to change course.
Yet many antiwar voices are citing Hamer to argue they are playing a long game that will eventually produce a more balanced U.S. approach toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s a shout-out to a time when activists channeled popular frustration into progress within Democratic politics — the stated goal of most who challenged Gaza policy at the DNC — rather than other years, like 1968, which saw mass disruptions over the Vietnam war.
In 1964, Hamer led a group of her fellow Mississippians in a delegation to that year’s Democratic convention. They tried to convince the DNC’s credentials committee to replace the all-white delegation — selected by Mississippi’s Democratic establishment, which was run by segregationists — with their multiracial slate.
In a televised session, Hamer told the committee how Mississippi’s leaders had violently blocked the Black population from registering to vote. The state’s official DNC delegation lacked legitimacy, she argued, and the national Democratic leadership should instead seat her group, members of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party.
Top Democrats were stubborn. Then-President Lyndon B. Johnson scheduled a press conference to distract attention from Hamer’s testimony. She and her party were treated as “reckless, as too angry, as overplaying their hand,” Jeanne Theoharis, a civil rights historian at Brooklyn College, told the progressive outlet Truthout.
Democratic leaders ultimately offered a compromise: two delegate seats for Hamer’s group and no racial discrimination at conventions moving forward. “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats,” Hamer declared in response.
“While Hamer’s plea … failed, she succeeded in imprinting on the American consciousness a vivid image of the viciousness of white Southern racism,” Jill Watts, a professor at California State University San Marcos, wrote in The New York Times. That made Hamer’s activism more successful in the following years.
Advocates for greater concern for Palestinians say they will emulate that example.
Hamer’s party “showed how inside/outside grassroots organizing can challenge entrenched systems, even without immediate wins,” Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for the “Uncommitted” coalition of Democratic primary voters who refused to support Biden over his Gaza policy, argued on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday.
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In standing behind the demand for a Palestinian American speaking slot, “we stand firmly in [Hamer’s] legacy, rejecting weak offers by the DNC and Harris campaign,” Shahid said, claiming they had offered closed-door meetings with staff as an alternative.
The DNC did permit a first-of-its-kind panel to discuss Palestinian rights and has in recent weeks held private meetings with Arab Americans, Muslim Americans and “Uncommitted” representatives.
“Uncommitted” organizers have now set a Sept. 15 deadline for more meaningful outreach from Harris’ team, like a meeting between the candidate herself and Palestinians who have personal ties to the devastation in Gaza.
They and many of their allies emphasize that the convention itself was not the focus of their advocacy. Instead, they hope to change Democratic policy by ensuring it is informed by a range of views on the war.
“These folks are using nonviolent civil disobedience tactics, the same tactics that Black Americans used, and they’re showing up to the political space demanding inclusion the same way Black civil rights leaders have done,” Mike McBride, a Bay Area-based pastor and the co-founder of the Black Church PAC, told HuffPost Thursday afternoon.
“In a big tent, is the big tent not big enough for the Palestinian American voice?” he asked.
Though no Palestinians spoke at the DNC, the parents of an Israeli American who was captured during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas were invited to address the convention, creating a contrast antiwar groups highlighted. HuffPost spoke with multiple delegates who are committed to Harris who backed the idea of a speaker who could present another perspective on the war, and spotted dozens of attendees inside the convention wearing scarves and other symbols of solidarity with Palestinians alongside pro-Democratic swag.
Addressing the press conference where Romman spoke later that day, McBride cited Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
“What you did did work — it is working,” McBride told the antiwar activists. “You did not lose this; you are not defeated here. … Keep bending the arc with your will, with your integrity. Whatever you do, beloved, don’t give up.”
Mohammed Khader, the policy manager for the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and the grand-nephew of civil rights activist Izeal Bennett, sees international attention as a key parallel between the fight for Democrats to consider Palestinian Americans’ concerns about the war and the battle for Black Americans to be included in domestic politics.
Following World War II, amid the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, some powerful Americans came to see segregation as a strategic weakness because it hurt the image of the U.S. abroad. Meanwhile, leaders and activists in a wide range of countries were tracking crackdowns against the civil rights movement and the pleas of its members for basic rights.
“African leaders were watching the U.S. at a time when international solidarity was very much driving the civil rights movement,” Khader said.
Today, the U.S. has become an outlier in its near-total backing of Israel’s actions. Many countries have endorsed an immediate cease-fire, and even American allies have criticized the Israeli campaign more than Washington has.
“People around the world are watching what the Democratic Party is doing now. And a result, if they don’t get things right on Israel and Palestine right now, a lot of countries are probably not going to have confidence in the next administration to do what’s right and what’s needed,” Khader said. He said that’s a factor for Harris and her team to consider as they weigh how to respond to the antiwar movement.
To Jim Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute and a longtime figure in the Democratic Party, the clearest echo of 1964 is that the party’s leadership has misunderstood the base.
“The point’s been proven that the party has to change position,” said Zogby, a pollster who regularly cites surveys showing dissatisfaction over Gaza among Democratic voters conducted by his own group, as well as in others’ polls. “The question now is why is it not?”
He referenced the Hamer incident and an earlier fight at the 1948 DNC by Black activists to make the party more assertive on civil rights.
“This is not just about a Palestinian giving a speech about Gaza: It’s about recognizing the humanity of people,” Zogby said, noting he was the last Arab American to address a Democratic convention — a full 36 years ago.
Placing blame on “the consultant class” among Democrats, who he argued have “a pretty shallow” view of the electorate, he said Harris has already opened “a door to understanding” concerns over Gaza. He noted that DNC attendees had cheered mentions of an end to the war repeatedly during the week.
When Zogby spoke at the DNC, it was because of pressure from a leader ― then-Democratic presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson. This year, Gaza skeptics have successfully built a movement “from the bottom up” that attracted hundreds of thousands of Democratic primary votes, he noted.
“She needs to know that the folks who guide her on this convention … hurt her, hurt my community,” Zogby said at Thursday evening’s press conference, saying the rejection of the speaker slot could cost Harris votes.
Now, he continued, “we’ve got work to do.”