Who is Fannie Lou Hamer?

Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. Her parents were sharecroppers and farmed land on a plantation. Fannie was the last child of twenty children, six girls and fourteen boys. She contracted polio as a child and because there no vaccine for polio at the time, she was left with a limp. Although she was short and had a limp, her mother always told her to "stand up no matter what the odds."

At the age of six, she began picking cotton to help the family. She said, "By the time I was thirteen I was picking two and three hundred pounds." Fannie only attended school after the harvest, which wasn't for very long, she said, "My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school [for black children] didn't last but four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear. I dropped out of school and cut cornstalks to help the family." She dropped out of school after the sixth grade. Even though she did not obtain a formal education, she became a dynamic speaker and civil rights worker.

During the 1960's Fannie became interested in the civil rights movement. She became involved in voter registration when members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to Mississippi. She remarked, "One day in early August, I heard that some young people had come to town teaching people how to register to vote. I have always wanted to do something to help myself and my race, but I did not know how to go about it. So, I went to one of the meetings in Ruleville. That night, I was showed how to fill out a form for registration. The next day, August 31, 1962, I went to Indianola, Mississippi to fill out a form at the registrar's office. I took the test."

During this time, African-Americans were deterred from voting in the South. When Hamer and others from her city went to register to vote, they were asked to interpret the state's constitution. So, naturally, being unable to do so, Hamer flunked and was not allowed to register to vote. On the return trip home, the bus in which she and the others were riding was stopped for being "the wrong color." She and the others were jailed and later released. This sort of harassment was a typical experience for blacks in the South. When she returned home, Marlow, her landowner gave her an ultimatum, either stop trying to vote or leave his property. Hamer chose to leave the property and her family. Her husband remained on the property to continue working. Hamer stayed with various friends and neighbors. At each house in which she was staying, night riders caused violence.

In 1963, after her third attempt, Hamer passed the test and became a registered voter. In order to assist other African-Americans in registering to vote, Hamer became a field secretary for SNCC and traveled across the South. On June 9, 1963, during one of the trips to South Carolina, the bus in which she and other SNCC workers was riding was stopped in Winona, Mississippi. When some of the workers went into the "white only" waiting room, the whole group was arrested. While in custody, Hamer and other workers were beaten unmercifully. Hamer suffered extreme injuries, which bothered her throughout the rest of her life. She said of the incident:

"Three white men came into my room. One was a state highway policeman…They said they were going to make me wish I was dead. They made me lay down on my face and they ordered two Negro prisoners to beat me with a blackjack. That was unbearable. The first prisoner beat me until he was exhausted, then the second Negro began to beat me….They beat me until I was hard, 'til I couldn't bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That's how I got this blood clot in my eye--the sight's nearly gone now. My kidney was injured from the blows they gave me on the back."

SNCC lawyers bailed her and the others out and filed suit against the Winona police. All the whites who were charged were found not guilty. This injustice made Hamer more determined to fight for equal rights in Mississippi. She is famous for the words she said when she awoke in the mornings, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

1964 was an election year. Unable to attend a local precinct meeting of the Democratic Party, SNCC formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). At the Democratic national convention in Atlantic City, Fannie Hamer and other delegates challenged the Party for not addressing the concerne of the blacks of Mississippi. Hamer spoke to the Credentials Committee during the convention about the injustices of the all-white Democratic delegation. In part of the speech she asked, "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we are threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings?" A compromise was made in which two seats would be given to the MFDP. The Democratic Party promised never to have an all-white delegation again. In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights act, empowering federal registrars to register African American votes in the South.

Hamer continued to work to better conditions in Mississippi by organizing grass-roots antipoverty projects. She became a sought after national speaker and worked to unite the black and white factions of the Mississippi Democratic party. In 1965, "Mississippi" magazine named her one of six "Women of Influence" in the state. In 1968, she helped create a food cooperative, to help the poor obtain more meat in their diet. In 1969, she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in which 5,000 people were able to grow their own food and own 680 acres of land. In 1972, she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus. During the last ten years of her life, she worked on issues such as school desegregation, child day-care, and low-income housing.

Fannie Lou Hamer died on March 15, 1977. Many civil rights leaders and workers attended her funeral. One of the many who spoke at the funeral was Andrew Young, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, he said, "Women were the spine of our movement. It was women going door-to-door, speaking with their neighbors, meeting in voter-registration classes together, organizing through their churches, that gave the vital momentum and energy to the movement. Mrs. Hamer was special but she was also representative…She shook the foundations of this nation."