Voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer from Ruleville, Mississippi challenges the Credentials Committee at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey to seat Blacks as part of the all-white Mississippi delegation.

The Mississippi Freedom Democrats take their campaign for Black voting rights to the Democratic National Convention in August, 1964.

At the 1968 convention in Chicago Rev. Channing Phillips, a District of Columbia pastor pledged to the candidacy of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy allows his name to be put in nomination for President as a favorite-son candidate. A staunch supporter of home-rule for the District of Columbia, he becomes the first African-American to be formally nominated as a presidential candidate in a major political party.

The then young civil rights activist and state legislator Julian Bond is nominated for vice president at the 1968 convention but must acknowledge that he is not age-qualified to hold the office. Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965 but had to lodge a Supreme Court battle after being denied his seat due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. The Court ruled in his favor in 1966.

In 1972 in Miami Florida, Rep. Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn, New York, the first Black woman to serve in Congress and a presidential candidate boldly addresses the Democratic Convention as she ends her historic candidacy.

On the heels of the Watergate scandal, Rep. Barbara Jordan of Texas, a key figure on the House Judiciary Committee, gives a memorable keynote address to convention delegates in 1976 in Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Rev. Jesse Jackson arrives in San Francisco a legitimate presidential candidate in 1984 as he pursues the first of two historic campaigns.

In Atlanta in 1988 the Jackson campaign has a profound impact at the Democratic National Convention, challenging the candidacy of Governor Michael Dukakis and leveraging Rev. Jackson’s delegate count into significant rule changes and the selection of his convention chair Ron Brown as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

As Democrats return to New York City, they give an emotional welcome to Rep. Barbara Jordan as she takes to the stage in a wheelchair to address the convention.

A political neophyte Barack Obama, candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, captivates the nation’s imagination in 2004 with his speech in Boston.

After a long-fought primary battle Senator Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for President, making him the first African-American presidential candidate of a major political party in the history of the nation.