David Mixner - McCarthy Presidential Campaign

McCarthy Presidential Campaign

Later that year, Mixner dropped out of college and began working for the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy. One of Mixner’s first assignments was organizing the Minnesota operation, helping McCarthy win the Minnesota caucus, defeating incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson. Later, Mixner and other members of McCarthy’s campaign team went to Georgia to help select an alternative delegation to send to the national convention in Chicago, challenging Governor Lestor Maddox’s hand-picked delegation, which included only seven African-Americans in the 117 person delegation. The Georgia Democratic Party Forum, which sought to challenge Maddox’s delegation, held its own convention in Macon, where Congressman John Conyers (D–MI) keynoted their convention before turning over the floor to Julian Bond, the first African-American elected to the Georgia legislature, who would later become Chairman of the NAACP.

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Mixner was beaten by police during the protests held outside the convention center. After Humphrey claimed the nomination, Mixner began seeking out new outlets for his activism. He soon befriended Doris Kearns Goodwin, who introduced Mixner to Senator Ted Kennedy, who would become a lifelong friend.

Read more about this topic:  David Mixner

Famous quotes containing the words presidential campaign, mccarthy, presidential and/or campaign:

    Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    The happy ending is our national belief.
    —Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request—it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    The fact that a man is to vote forces him to think. You may preach to a congregation by the year and not affect its thought because it is not called upon for definite action. But throw your subject into a campaign and it becomes a challenge.
    John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)