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.