As head of SNCC, Barry led protests against racial segregation and discrimination. After he left McComb, Barry's lobbied the state legislatures to try to convince them to vote to make the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) the recognized Democratic party of Mississippi in the 1964 Democratic National Convention. In a protest of their continuing disenfranchisement, African Americans had organized this party to prove that blacks wanted to vote and conducted a trial election. Barry slept on the boardwalk in Atlantic City the night after speaking to the New Jersey Legislature.