By Jerry Mitchell, Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Ms., August 16

Victoria Gray Adams was an active leader of IPPN and an inspiration to many. She was a consistent supporter of action against racism, for social justice and independent politics.
Victoria Gray Adams helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and, in so doing, changed history.

"It opened up the national Democratic Party and caused President (Lyndon B.) Johnson to move in the right direction," said Lawrence Guyot, a fellow founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Adams, 79, died of cancer Saturday at her home in Petersburg, Va. Born in Hattiesburg in 1926, she succeeded in business before being drawn into the civil rights movement and was engaged in real estate and marketing in Petersburg.

In 1962, she and several others attempted to register to vote in her hometown, known for keeping African Americans off the voting rolls. Three bus drivers who joined her were fired.

She taught literacy classes at churches. "Many times I was able to use the literacy thing where I couldn't use anything else," Adams told historian John Dittmer. "This is the way I would recruit people."

In 1964, she and other activists formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and Gray, Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine ran for Congress. At a committee hearing at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Hamer told a national television audience she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired." Freedom Democrats pushed to unseat the all-white delegation from Mississippi, rejecting a compromise offered by Johnson. "We didn't come all this way for no two seats, 'cause all of us is tired," Hamer said.

Although the all-white delegation remained, the incident altered how parties pick delegates.

"It did change the way the Democratic Party handled its business," said Dittmer, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. "All of this changed the South. LBJ when he signed the Voting Rights Act told Bill Moyers, 'I've lost the South for a generation,' and he was right. On the other hand, you had the empowerment of African Americans, and that has positive effects that are still being calculated."

Overcoming Fear

Adams willingly went to jail when the time came, Guyot said. "She never, ever retreated on any fight."

In 2005, she recalled those days: "Yes, we were scared. There were threats, economic retaliations, beatings, people shot at and jailed. If you were not scared, then something was wrong with you."

At the 2004 National Democratic Convention, poet and best-selling author Maya Angelou honored Adams, Guyot and others involved in the 1964 challenge. Adams recalled the challenge as "a history-changing event with a far-reaching impact that we would never have thought about."

Also in 2004, she was honored at the Kennedy Center at a showing of the documentary about her and other heroines from the civil rights movement, Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders.

Dittmer said because Adams was middle-aged in the 1960s, many of those who were young in the civil rights movement looked up to her. "Her leadership ability was very high," he said. "She was extremely helpful to the young civil rights workers who wanted to do everything overnight."

Ellie Dahmer of Hattiesburg, whose husband Vernon Sr. was killed by the Klan in 1966 for his voting rights work, remembers Adams as "one of the early pioneers. She and others made these sacrifices at such an early time when it was so dangerous.

I don't think we should ever forget what she and others did to pave the way," Dahmer said.

Adams taught in the public schools in rural Mississippi and the Royal Thai Languages Academy in Bangkok.