During the turbulent summer of 1964, a coalition of sharecroppers, ministers, and students in Mississippi united to challenge the white-only state Democratic Party. Risking their lives as they built on the foundation provided by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the state NAACP, they created their own group: the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. They organized a fully legal, integrated delegation in just four months and sent it to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City to challenge the segregated regular delegation.