ABSTRACT
The Democratic National Convention was to be the coronation of Lyndon Johnson, the beginning of his administration. 'He orchestrated the whole', Ken O'Donnell recalled, 'and that was his total consumption'. The last four Democratic party conventions had revealed gaping party splits and resulted in agonizing floor fights. Johnson would make certain that at his convention there would be no floor fights, no walkouts, no last-minute scrambling for votes, nothing that would embarrass him or put a damper on the happy event. The first problem was that Atlantic City was simply not up to hosting a national convention. Larry O'Brien described the convention as 'about as placid as a Democratic convention could be'. However, the appearance of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a racially integrated organization claiming the seats of the all-white Mississippi delegation, not only brought some drama to the convention, it became a watershed event in the civil rights movement.
