During the summer of 1964 SNCC and the Council Of Federated Organizations (COFO) held a mock election, to show Afro-Americans how elections were supposed to work but also to show that they wanted to participate in the political process but were shut out of it. The dominant party in the South from 1977 to 1964 was the Democratic Party. Eighty thousand Afro-Americans cast ballots for candidates, and elected delegates to attend the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. Among the leaders were Aaron Henry and Fannie Lou Hamer. The regular Democratic Party in Mississippi elected an all-white delegation to the convention. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was open to all adults in Mississippi regardless of race, elected 68 delegates to contest the seats of Miss. at the Convention. This group of 68 consisted of 64 Afro-Americans and 4 Euro-Americans. One of the white delegates was a minister, Rev. Ed King. Fannie Lou Hamer testified before the Committee about how she had been beaten and brutalized. Others testified about the harassment and intimidation they had experienced.

White liberals sympathized with the challenge. But LBJ feared that if the Credentials Committee awarded the disputed seats to MFDP, the white delegates from the Southern states would walk out. LBJ agreed that MFDP had a just cause, and its grievance was sound. But the challenge threatened to upset the applecart and make waves. LBJ wanted the convention that was expected to nominate him as the Democratic nominee to go smoothly. The MFDP issue was inconvenient. It threatened to rain on his parade and cause political problems for him in the South. Therefore he wanted to make it "go away."

Northern liberals knew that LBJ disliked Robert Kennedy, and LBJ was determined not to select RFK as his vice presidential running mate. But they did want him to name a liberal as his running mate, and the leading contender was Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. Humphrey was given the task of working out a compromise with MFDP. Joseph Rauh and other white liberals hoped that the Credentials Committee would award half the seats to the Mississippi "regulars," and half to MFDP. But Southern governors warned LBJ that this would provoke a walkout by Southerners at the convention. LBJ fretted about the 112 electoral votes from the South.

Humphrey's protégé, Walter Mondale, tried to stitch together a compromise. The offer was that MFDP would be given two seats at large, to the Convention, but not representing Mississippi. The white "regulars" would have to take an oath pledging to support the Party's presidential and vice presidential nominees (the "ticket"). And the Convention would not seat any delegation that discriminated AT THE 1968 CONVENTION. So this was a promise for the future, which conceded the principle that MFDP was raising in 1964. The Johnson Administration chose Aaron Henry and Rev. Ed King as the two MFDP delegates who would be given symbolic seats at large.

Bob Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer and others did not want to compromise. They felt that their cause was just, and the proposed compromise was tainted politics. Rauh warned MLK that his funding from liberal in the the Autoworkers and organized labor was "on the line," but King refused to allow himself to be used, and maintained neutrality and did not "lean" on MFDP to accept the compromise. In the end Fannie Lou Hamer felt that "we didn't come all this way for no two seats." MFDP felt that to accept the compromise would be to betray the thousands of black people in Miss. who had risked their very lives to cast a symbolic vote. MFDP held to a stance of moral purity. It rejected the offer. Members of MFDP tried to sit in the seats of the Miss. delegation. Police officials had to discreetly remove them.

In the end MFDP felt betrayed, even by the liberal white allies. To make matters worse, the Johnson admin. had chosen the two delegates rather than allowing MFDP to choose its own two people for the two seats. The Johnson administration absolutely did not want Fannie Lou Hamer to be chosen because they regarded her as a loudmouth and as "that ignorant woman" (not formally educated or well-spoken). MFDP resented that white liberals felt that THEY knew what was best for black people, and felt or acted as if they felt they could tell Afro-Americans what to do and demand that they do as they were told (like children). MFDP walked out of the Convention.

Politically, it would have made more sense to take what one could get, and settle for half a loaf. In 1968 the Convention did enforce the anti-discrimination policy. But psychologically MFDP could not accept a political compromise with what they felt was "wrong" when in their hearts they believed they were right. Atlantic City was a bitter experience for MFDP, and the lesson that the members took with them was that white people, including their liberal allies, could not be trusted. MFDP felt that whites would sacrifice the interests of blacks whenever it was politically convenient to do so. In other words, whites were not reliable or trustworthy allies. This fed into a sense of isolation on the part of some black activists, and the separatist philosophy of "self reliance: we have to depend on ourselves because we cannot depend on our allies not to betray us. If there is a conflict between what is best for "us," and what is best for "them," "they" will sell "us" down the river. "They" will only support "us" when it is convenient, and it does not cost them anything, or they stand to gain something from it. The philosophy of self-reliance would be articulated as Black Power, by Kwame Ture, in June 1966.

Ironically, the white "regular" Alabama and Mississippi delegations walked out too, but because they refused to pledge loyalty to Johnson.

In the election of 1964 LBJ painted Goldwater as a warmonger who might use nuclear weapons in Vietnam and lead the US into World War III. In November LBJ carried 44 states in the Electoral College. Goldwater won 6 states: Arizona, Alabama, SC, GA, Mississippi and Louisiana. For the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans won election to Congress from Miss, AL, GA and SC. The segregationists of the South never forgave LBJ or the Democratic Party for committing "treason" and passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As the Democratic Party became more liberal and more "black," white southerners (such as David Duke) left the Democratic Party and turned to the conservative Republican Party of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and George Bush.