As the Democratic Party holds its convention this week, I’m reminded of a relief kit that I came across at auction a few years ago. There was a box of them, unopened, each bearing the same wording:
“Convention Survival Kit. Democratic National Convention 1964.” In the center was the logo for Miller High Life beer.
I wasn’t sure what was in the packets, so I opened one of them. It contained Alka Seltzer tablets, Anacin aspirins, a mini DO NOT DISTURB sign and a Curad bandage. It was obviously a novelty care package to relieve the discomfort from a night of partying and good cheer.
I decided to write a blog post about the packets and that year’s convention. During my research, I learned of something that certainly distressed the Democratic Party and incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson even more than too many beers.
Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a group of black and white activists, crashed that August convention in Atlantic City. They walked in with their own slate of delegates after the white state Democratic Party in Mississippi had refused to allow them to participate in choosing delegates.
Hamer is best known for an emphatic statement she made in an interview published in The Nation in June 1964: “‘All my life I’ve been sick and tired,’ she shakes her head.” “‘Now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.'”
This survival kit may have been conceived as a lighthearted joke by the Democratic Party, but Hamer and the other civil rights activists from Mississippi were not kidding.
I titled the blog post “Survival kits no remedy for headaches caused by ’64 Mississippi activists.” It’s a fitting time to revisit the “back then.”
