This thesis shows the development and shifts in rhetorical form as strategies
evolve to meet heresthetic demands. This thesis explores the rhetorical crisis that
emerged between the Democratic Party and the Mississippi Freedom Party at the 1964
Democratic Convention. Specifically, the focus is on the rhetorical discourse presented
by the members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Fannie Lou Hamer in
particular, at the Credentials Committee two days before the onset of the actual
Convention. It is the rhetorical interplay in the specific context of the Committee, the
subsequent political bargaining behind the scenes during the next four days of the
Convention, and the emerging and evolving constraints as a result of this bargaining that
illuminate the symbolic power and limitations behind a rhetoric aimed at redefining race
in the nation??s social and political consciousness
