In the early 1960s , Pickering was active in the Democratic Party , but he switched affiliation in 1964 to the Mississippi Republican Party . At the time , Pickering said that “ the people of his state were heaped with humiliation and embarrassment at the Democratic Convention ” in Atlantic City , New Jersey . At the convention , African Americans , who had been disenfranchised in the Deep South except during Reconstruction , formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the party regulars . A month before the convention , U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Democratic Convention
1964 Democratic National Convention
Charles W. Pickering