CHAPTER THREE

WE WANT LEADERS

We want people over us that’s concerned about the people because we are human beings. . . . And we can no longer ignore the fact that we can’t sit down and wait for things to change because as long as they can keep their feet on our neck, they will always do it. But it’s time for us to stand up and be women and men.

—FANNIE LOU HAMER1

Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers raiding her home. The officers had forcibly entered without warning, acting on a no-knock warrant as part of a drug investigation. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of Taylor’s home, and no drugs were ever found. But when they came through the door unexpectedly in plain clothes, Taylor’s boyfriend, startled by the presence of intruders, fired his weapon. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead—shot six times by police officers.² In the weeks following Taylor’s death, a network of Black women activists—including Taylor’s mother, Tamika Parker, and Taylor’s sister, Ju’Niyah Palmer—rallied together to bring greater awareness to this senseless act of state violence. In April 2020, Taylor’s mother sued the three police officers who fired shots into her daughter’s apartment, pointing to the officers’ use of excessive force and gross negligence.³

As protests erupted on the streets of Louisville, one activist launched a powerful digital campaign that significantly catapulted the case to the national spotlight. In June 2020, Cate Young, a twenty-nine-year-old Los Angeles–based writer originally from Trinidad and Tobago, introduced #BirthdayForBreonna as a call to action on what would have been Taylor’s twenty-seventh birthday (June 5).4 “I just wanted to do something,” Young said. “I was like, I’m going to drive myself insane with worry and panic if I don’t do something.”⁵ Young was deeply frustrated with the lack of national media attention the case was receiving despite the growth of local protests.⁶ “It’s important not to leave Black women out of the fight for Black lives because they are instrumental to that fight,” Young argued.⁷ Intent on mobilizing activists across the country, she launched the campaign by first appealing to her followers on Twitter and others within her social media and personal networks. She created a page with a list of actionable steps others could take on June 5 to fight for justice for Taylor’s family. Young’s campaign urged supporters to make donations to an online fund for Taylor’s family and sign petitions to demand criminal charges for the police officers responsible for Taylor’s death. The campaign also called upon supporters to send emails and birthday cards to Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron and Louisville metro mayor Greg Fischer, reiterating the same message.⁸

After only twenty-four hours, Young’s #BirthdayForBreonna initiative spread like wildfire. “It has just been growing and growing,” Young explained on June 6. “People really stepped up.”⁹ Indeed, the campaign captured the attention of millions of Americans that summer, who were deeply moved by Young’s act of resistance and her affirmation of Black life. The hashtag began trending on Twitter, and supporters across the nation and the globe began to flood Instagram with Taylor’s name. Young’s creative idea quickly blossomed into a powerful act of protest, providing a way for countless Americans to challenge state violence from their homes as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the nation and globe. The hashtag #BirthdayForBreonna also drew supporters from diverse racial and social backgrounds. Business owners across the country backed the online campaign, with several bakers deciding to make cakes in Taylor’s honor and one greeting card company even designing specialized cards in her memory.

Celebrities such as actresses Kerry Washington, Busy Philipps, and Charlize Theron joined the campaign, using their massive social media platforms to share the hashtag and encourage their followers to join the movement to seek justice for Taylor’s relatives. By the afternoon of June 6, the online fund for Taylor’s family had raised more than $5 million, significantly exceeding the original goal of $500,000.10 The donations made it possible for the family to establish a fund in Taylor’s name, dedicated to police reform and creating “better police officers, reasonable rules of engagement, more accountability and a focus on law enforcement.”¹¹ Within two weeks of the #BirthdayForBreonna campaign launch, the Louisville Metro Council unanimously passed Breonna’s Law to outlaw no-knock warrants and require the use of body cameras during searches. The Louisville Metro Police Department also fired the three officers involved in Taylor’s killing.¹² In the ensuing months, the three officers appeared before a Kentucky grand jury, which ultimately failed to return manslaughter or homicide charges.

Despite the lack of legal accountability for the three officers involved in the Breonna Taylor case, the organizing efforts of Cate Young illuminate the extraordinary power of community leaders. Deeply moved by the painful circumstances of Taylor’s death, Young worked to transform her concern into concrete steps that could make a difference in the lives of Taylor’s loved ones. With clear vision and passion, Young developed a creative strategy to bring greater visibility to Taylor’s killing. Although she had few resources and initially lacked the backing of any organizations or well-known figures, Young devised and launched a digital campaign that increased awareness, united millions of people, and raised millions of dollars for the Taylor family.

Decades before Young memorialized Breonna Taylor’s murder as a tool to galvanize people into action, Fannie Lou Hamer emphasized how empowering people on the grassroots level was an important tactic for social and political change. And like Young, Hamer worked to shed light on issues most Americans tried to ignore. She carved out a space to advocate for social justice and forged innovative strategies to galvanize activists across the nation during the 1960s and ’70s. Hamer emphasized the need for more leaders to engage with the grassroots and common folk—empowering these individuals to emerge as leaders—in order to challenge all forms of social injustices. She knew from past experience that leaders could come from all backgrounds—even those who lacked financial resources and formal education or had a marginalized social status. As she traveled across the nation, she recognized that the true test of leadership was the ability to empower others to act. This kind of work often took place behind the scenes, outside of the public limelight. Black communities needed this type of leader to ensure the vitality and the longevity of the civil rights movement. “We want leaders in our community,” Hamer explained. “People will say . . ., ‘Well, if we can get rid of Fannie Lou, [then] we can get rid of the trouble.’ But what they don’t know, freedom is like an eating cancer, if you kill me, it will break out all over the place.”13 For Hamer, galvanizing others to take action represented the most powerful expression of leadership. Far more than gaining visibility, she argued, the core aspect of effective leadership was to provide people with the necessary tools and resources to expand the fight for social justice.

“LET SOME OF THE GRASSROOT[S] PEOPLE HAVE A CHANCE.”

Fannie Lou Hamer’s ideas on leadership—especially the qualities that made a good leader versus an ineffective one—grew from personal experience. As a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the organizations that worked under the banner of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), Hamer worked closely with a diverse group of activists, including women leaders who served as role models.¹⁴ Ella Baker’s example of a Black woman’s leadership style arguably had the most influence on Hamer, who openly admired Baker after their paths crossed in the early 1960s. Hamer admitted as much during a 1973 interview with historian Neil McMillen. When asked to identify “the most important Black leader in the United States today,” Hamer focused specifically on Baker: “A woman that I really respect more than I do any other living woman at this time for her role in civil rights and activity is a woman in New York City named Miss Ella Baker. . . . She’s a beautiful human being.”¹⁵

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1903, Baker grew up in North Carolina and went on to play an instrumental role in the growth of the civil rights movement.16 After graduating from Shaw University, she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), becoming a field secretary during the early 1940s. In 1957, she worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. to help organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) but parted ways with the group in 1960 over their leadership model. SCLC, like many civil rights organizations of the period, built the organization around one central (male) leader, mirroring the leadership structure of Black churches. Moreover, the organization’s leaders were especially interested in planning large-scale and short-term public events known as mobilizing, as opposed to grassroots organizing—the bottom-up, community-based political activism that was vital to the development of local leaders. Whereas mobilizing drew national and sometimes international attention to specific events, grassroots organizing continued long after the media attention was gone.¹⁷

Baker embraced the organizing tradition, resisted the emphasis on one charismatic leader, and called on activists to adopt a groupcentered model. Baker’s inclusive vision—one that created space for leaders regardless of age, gender, class, education, or race—informed her efforts to help launch SNCC with student activists at Shaw University.¹⁸ Indeed, she was the driving force behind the organization, having more influence in its development than any other activist in the movement.¹⁹ As Baker explained, SNCC was “an opportunity for adult and youth to work together and provide genuine leadership— the development of the individual to his highest potential for the benefit of the group.”²⁰ SNCC’s reach and impact would extend far beyond Shaw, however. Hamer, like many other activists, experienced the transformative power of SNCC in the Deep South, which opened a world of possibilities for the sharecropper. Baker’s mentoring and vision of leadership played an integral part in the development of Hamer’s organizational philosophy.

Ella Baker’s vision of group-centered leadership hinged on her belief in the power of grassroots political organizing. She understood local organizing as a necessary component of Black self-determination—the principle that people of African descent must take full control of their lives and future and determine the terms of their resistance.21 This viewpoint provided the framework for SNCC’s organizational efforts in the South during the 1960s. Indeed, SNCC’s organizing work in Mississippi followed the activists’ impulse to “advance the right of poor Black Mississippians to determine their own future.”²² A group-centered model of leadership, which tipped the scales of power from one or two celebrity-like leaders to a vast number of individuals, opened up a critical space for ordinary Black women—especially those who were impoverished and living in rural areas—to publicly shape the ideas and direction of the civil rights movement.²³

In a 1966 interview, Hamer praised SNCC for providing a platform for local people to seek out their own destiny. “If SNCC hadn’t of come into Mississippi,” she insisted, “there never would have been a Fannie Lou Hamer.”²⁴ She credited the organization for igniting the spark in her political activism simply by granting her the opportunity to lead. According to Hamer, her encounter with SNCC was the “first time” she had been “treated as a human being” by activists of any race.²⁵ In her telling, this meant that the youth in SNCC carefully listened to her and allowed her to share her thoughts and grievances. Throughout Hamer’s life, she often credited SNCC activists for taking her ideas seriously.²⁶ For Hamer, the most powerful aspect of SNCC’s work was their commitment to allowing local people to lead on their own terms, rather than dictating their every step. Along these lines, Hamer drew a stark contrast between SNCC’s efforts and those of the NAACP:

[SNCC] worked with the people. NAACP didn’t work with the people. You know, I used to write membership for the [NAACP] and they don’t care. They care about folk. You see I’m not particular about working with nobody that don’t say “yes, sir” to everything to Mr. Charlie, and that’s all the [NAACP] does. There ain’t nothing that I respect less than the NAACP. It’s awful. Now the legal affairs. I don’t fight the legal affairs because they have some good attorneys. But I don’t respect no man that as I said is a traitor to their own race. I don’t respect no man for that.²⁷

Hamer’s remarks failed to account for the NAACP’s diverse approaches to and engagement in local politics, which varied from chapter to chapter. They also failed to account for the crucial role local NAACP activists such as Amzie Moore and C. C. Bryant played in bringing SNCC into Mississippi.28 However, Hamer’s critiques did represent the perspective of a rural Mississippian on the limitations of the NAACP’s approach, especially at the national level. They also capture the varied leadership styles, visions, and approaches undertaken by civil rights activists. Hamer denounced what she viewed as a paternalistic impulse among certain NAACP leaders who often attempted to dictate instructions that followed the line of respectability rather than allowing local people to carve out their own paths to achieving civil rights. While NAACP leaders like Roy Wilkins attempted to instruct Hamer on how best to accomplish her political goals, the leaders of SNCC such as Baker, Bob Moses, and James Forman listened to Hamer and encouraged her to pursue the path that best represented the interests of Black people in Mississippi.²⁹

In Hamer’s political vision, the most effective leaders emerged from the same local space in which they sought to organize. Though she valued the contributions and assistance of national groups, she did not want those groups to control the local movement. She believed that local people understood, more than anyone else, the challenges in their communities and could articulate how best to address them. “Don’t [tell] me about somebody that ain’t been in Mississippi two weeks,” she argued, “and don’t know nothing about the problems, ’cause they not leading us. And that’s the truth.”³⁰ Hamer went on to criticize white activists in the movement who took it upon themselves to anoint leaders of their choosing rather than allowing members of the community to have the final say on their representatives. “Time out for white people choosing the leader, hand picking the leader that [is] going to lead me ’cause we ain’t going to follow.”³¹

During the 1960s and ’70s, Hamer made the case for empowering ordinary individuals to advance the fight for social justice. She emphasized the need to center everyday people in this struggle—to “let some of the grassroot people have a chance,” as she explained it.³² Hamer recognized the need for a diverse group of leaders at the grassroots level as a necessary step in the fight for Black rights and freedom. Alluding to the oppression of Black people in American society, Hamer observed in 1964, “I’ve gone to a lot of big cities, and I’ve got my first city to go to where this man wasn’t standing with his feet on this black man’s neck.”33 She later elaborated on this point with another analogy, arguing, “I’ve seen too many miseries and too many tricks. They say we should pull ourselves up by the bootstraps but how the hell we gonna do that when the man keeps stealing away the boots?”³⁴

How then to keep the white man’s feet off the Black man’s neck and ensure that Black people had a chance to succeed? Hamer firmly believed it required a group effort. Progress called for ordinary people to come together, to pool their varied resources, to challenge racism and white supremacy—in every city, space, and context. “The only thing we can do, women and men, whether you [are] white or black, is to work together,” Hamer explained.³⁵ She celebrated the power of each individual action and believed that singular acts of courage would accumulate over time to dismantle racist structures.

Hamer also advocated for effective leaders and criticized those who occupied leadership positions in society but failed to live up to the expectations of their roles. “We want people over us that’s concerned about the people because we are human beings,” she noted.³⁶ As she traveled across the country during the 1960s, she often addressed leaders who lacked courage. “We know we have a long fight,” she noted, “because the leaders like the preachers and the teachers, they are failing to stand up today.”³⁷

“I used to have so much respect for teachers and preachers,” she elaborated in the speech. “[But] how, how, how can you actually trust a man and have respect for him [when] he’ll tell you to trust God, but he doesn’t trust Him himself?”³⁸ Hamer’s rhetorical question alluded to the inherent hypocrisy she saw in too many prominent members of the Black community—often individuals who were recognized as such solely for their profession, charisma, and education. Rather than stand in support with oppressed groups, they paid lip service to the movement, extending their support in words but not in deeds. “I don’t want to hear you say, ‘Honey, I’m behind you,’” Hamer explained. “Well, move, I don’t want you back there. Because you could be two hundred miles behind. I want you to say, ‘I’m with you.’ And we’ll go up this freedom road together.”39 For Hamer, the true test of any effective leader was their ability to stand firmly with members of the community in their moment of need—not in front of them or behind them but side by side. True leadership, in Hamer’s view, required a group effort; it was not tied solely to one individual or organization in the movement.

For Hamer, the call to leadership extended to all Americans, regardless of social background and education. She therefore resisted the efforts of those who tried to diminish the contributions of leaders with limited formal education. “Don’t worry about the qualifications,” she told a packed audience in 1969, “because just like they learned it, you can too.”⁴⁰ She addressed this issue again in 1971, while speaking at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Institute in New York City: “But you see now, baby, whether you have a Ph.D., D.D., or no D, we’re in this bag together. And whether you’re from Morehouse or Nohouse, we’re still in this bag together.”⁴¹ Hamer’s remarks alluded to the class tensions in the movement, which often fueled deep divisions among activists. To some middle-class and elite Black Americans during the 1960s, Hamer would hardly qualify as a leader because of her limited formal education. The reality that her colleagues and peers sometimes shunned her on account of her education and social background disappointed Hamer. On several occasions, she addressed the disrespect she endured at the hands of other civil rights leaders whose conception of leadership did not include an impoverished and disabled Black woman with a sixth-grade education. In a 1969 interview with New York Amsterdam News, Hamer recalled being “insulted and embarrassed by [her] own people.”⁴² At the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for example, Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, called Hamer an “ignorant woman”—expressing patriarchal condescension about her leadership capabilities and political knowledge.⁴³

While these kinds of statements were meant to demean Hamer, she pushed beyond them and remained committed to using her voice to empower those around her. She resisted the idea that leadership should be reserved for those with formal education and resources. This posed a direct challenge to many civil rights activists—especially those of middle-class status and those who had prior experience in the realm of politics. Hamer therefore stood apart from many of her contemporaries, including those who questioned the leadership potential of young people. Similar to activists such as Ella Baker, Gloria Richardson, and Rosa Parks, Hamer embraced young people in the movement, emphasizing their vitality, vision, and ability to lead.44 “I have high hopes in the young peoples of this nation, both black and white,” she once noted.⁴⁵ No doubt her time with SNCC, which drew on a diverse group of young activists, strengthened Hamer’s belief in the significance of empowering young leaders. Addressing Black students in one speech, Hamer encouraged them never to sit on the sidelines. “Stand up and be a man, a woman, wherever you are, because you’re as much as anybody else,” she insisted.⁴⁶ To that end, she devoted much of her time to supporting young activists, often working on college campuses to promote student political engagement. In June 1964, for example, Hamer helped to facilitate a weeklong voting rights training program for SNCC with several activists, including Julian Bond, at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. The training session, which offered instruction to the young activist students on how to facilitate voting registration in Mississippi, drew nearly three hundred participants.⁴⁷ For Hamer, these kinds of opportunities were vital to empowering young leaders in their efforts to help transform American society.

Hamer believed that focusing on one leader—or even a few—proved detrimental to social justice movements. “People will go to any limit just for personal power,” she pointed out. “It doesn’t really matter how the masses suffer, but just the few people, you know, controlling. . . . If there’s going to be any survival for this country, there must be, we have to make democracy a reality for all people and not just a few,” she added.⁴⁸ Hamer elaborated on this point in a 1971 speech, delivered in her hometown of Ruleville. She envisioned group-centered leadership as the only way to improve the conditions for Black people in the United States. “Community living and group decision making is local self-government,” she explained. “It is this type of community self-government that has been lost over the decades and thus created decay in our poor rural areas in the South and our northern ghettos.”⁴⁹ Hamer went on to argue that the lack of group-centered leadership was one of the factors that fueled social unrest in Black communities across the nation.50 “This is what we have seen played back to us time and time again, first as peaceful demonstrations, and most recently in the form of violence and riots. If this nation is to survive we must return to the concept of local self-government with everyone participating to the maximum degree possible.”⁵¹

“This is not to say, however, that we should not have a strong national or federal government,” she added, “because these branches too must be responsive to the needs of all local and state governments through true representation of all men and women who have total commitment to a true democratic process.”⁵² Hamer’s remarks reflected her deep commitment to advancing the core ideals of American democracy. Keeping the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution in mind, she advocated for the benefits of broad political participation—allowing all Americans to play an active role in shaping the laws and policies that dictate their everyday lives. These ideas guided her decision to help launch a movement that facilitated greater political participation among Black people in Mississippi.

“I’M FIGHTING FOR A PEOPLE’S MISSISSIPPI.”

During the mid-twentieth century, Southern Democrats worked to block African Americans from casting ballots by utilizing an array of legal and extralegal tactics. By the early 1960s, an estimated 5 percent of Black residents in Mississippi were registered to vote—and the Democratic Party advocated an all-white slate of representatives for the state.⁵³ With SNCC and other organizations, Hamer resisted this state of affairs, pointing to the importance of fair representation on the national level. As early as 1963, she was involved in a series of efforts aimed at diversifying the Mississippi Democrats—allowing the concerns of Black residents in the state to be heard. In the fall of that year, she addressed the importance of Black political representation at the Freedom Vote rally in Greenwood, Mississippi.⁵⁴ In November 1963, civil rights activists in COFO had organized the Freedom Vote, a mock election to protest the denial of Black voting rights in the state. The Freedom Vote was a coordinated effort to reveal the extent of voter suppression and demonstrate that if given the opportunity, Black people in Mississippi would exercise their right to vote. The mock ballot included an interracial ticket with Dr. Aaron Henry, a Black pharmacist, running for governor and Edwin King, a white college chaplain, running for lieutenant governor. While the Freedom Vote was symbolic, it sent a clear message that Black people were determined to exercise their constitutional rights, countering a widespread view among white Southerners that Black people lacked interest in electoral politics.55 In preparation for the vote, activists across the state held a series of Freedom Vote rallies to incite greater interest and support. The massive response to the Freedom Vote spoke volumes: between eighty thousand and ninety thousand Black residents in Mississippi participated.⁵⁶

The 1963 Freedom Vote set the stage for the establishment of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) several months later. On April 26, 1964, Hamer joined forces with COFO activists Bob Moses, Annie Devine, Ella Baker, Victoria Gray, and others in an effort to challenge Mississippi’s traditional Democratic Party, which had long excluded African Americans from participation.⁵⁷ She was the organization’s central pillar, agitating to bring an end to discrimination in the Democratic Party.⁵⁸ The MFDP was open to all, regardless of race, thereby providing a counter to the regular Democratic Party that upheld a system of exclusion. “The long history of systematic and studied exclusion of Negro citizens from equal participation in the political processes of the state grows more flagrant and intensified daily,” the MFDP explained.⁵⁹ In defiance of voter suppression tactics, the MFDP set out to give Black people in the state “an experience in political democracy.”⁶⁰ Hamer and others had made attempts to work with the Mississippi Democratic Party to no avail; African Americans were continuously kept out of the Party’s local, county, and state conventions. “When they wouldn’t allow us to go into their regular Democratic meeting,” she later recalled, “we organized what is now called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.”⁶¹

The MFDP embodied Hamer’s political vision, which was based on the principles of American democracy. The state’s all-white Democratic Party could not claim to represent the people of Mississippi when it excluded an estimated 500,000 Black residents. Anticipating those who would interpret her fight as an effort to advance an all-Black party, Hamer explained her vision for the MFDP during a speech: “I’m not fighting for a black Mississippi; I’m fighting for a people’s Mississippi. I’m not fighting to seat an all-black government in the state of Mississippi, but I want you to know something, white people, it certainly ain’t going to be an all-white one either.”62 As she emphasized on several occasions, the MFDP was an avenue to ensure that Black people would have a voice in electoral politics, thereby having an opportunity to shape local, state, and national politics.

In August 1964, only months after the MFDP’s founding, Hamer and other members traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to attend the Democratic National Convention. “When we went to Atlantic City,” Hamer explained, “we didn’t go there for publicity. We went there because we believed that America was what it said it was—the land of the free.”⁶³ The delegation, which consisted of sixty-eight activists, arrived in Atlantic City to challenge the Mississippi Democratic Party and the validity of its all-white delegation to the convention. Hamer and the MFDP hoped the national party would compel the state party to give up seats to their delegation rather than suffer the embarrassment of exposing the lack of equal representation before a national audience. They also hoped to raise awareness of the broader struggles Black people in Mississippi faced as they attempted to exercise their constitutional right to vote, as well as the resistance civil rights activists encountered while organizing in the state.

Several weeks before the convention took place, members of the MFDP were shocked to learn of the brutal murders of James Earl Chaney, an African American activist from Meridian, Mississippi, and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, two Jewish activists from New York City. The three men, who were part of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), had been helping register Black residents to vote for the MFDP before they disappeared under suspicious circumstances. When their bodies were discovered on August 4, it reminded activists of their greatest fear and constant reality—those organizing for the rights and freedom of Black people could lose their lives, regardless of race.⁶⁴ While the murders sought to intimidate civil rights workers and quell the MFDP’s work in the state, it achieved the opposite—it provided an impetus for the activists to demand immediate changes to the electoral process. The murders also served as a painful reminder to MFDP activists—and later the nation—that the fight for representation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City was a matter of life and death for the delegation.

The experience in Atlantic City transformed Hamer. She encountered resistance from adversaries as well as from her presumptive allies. “That is the time when we found out what politics was like—not only in Mississippi, but in the United States,” she recalled, “because I saw people threatening—I heard of people being threatened—because they dared to take a stand with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.”65 Hamer persisted and delivered what would become the most well-known speech of her political career before the Credentials Committee at the convention. Her speech, televised to an audience of millions, addressed two central issues: voter suppression and state-sanctioned violence. While she was addressing the myriad of challenges Black people experienced in Mississippi, President Lyndon Johnson tried to block Hamer’s speech, intentionally interrupting her testimony to give an impromptu press conference.

Notwithstanding the roadblocks she encountered in Atlantic City, Hamer managed to deliver an electrifying speech that captured the vision of the MFDP as a movement to empower African Americans in the state. The Democratic Party gave a weak rebuttal to Hamer’s remarks, insisting that Black people had not been excluded without offering any compelling evidence to back their claim. They ultimately attempted to make the problem go away, recognizing that the presence of Hamer and her colleagues at the Democratic National Convention was an impediment to their usual proceedings. Leaders of the Democratic Party tried to convince the MFDP to accept two nonvoting seats at the convention. The offer was a far cry from what Hamer and her associates demanded. By extending an offer to join the convention floor without any voting privileges, the two-seat offer amounted to a symbolic gesture lacking any influence or actual representation.⁶⁶

While Hamer vehemently resisted the two-seat offer, several civil rights leaders at the convention attempted to convince her otherwise. “I will never forget what they put us through,” she recalled, and attributed her experiences at the convention to her “being a Mississippi housewife [and a farmer] and never exposed to politics.”⁶⁷ From the vantage point of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, SCLC leader Andrew Young, and other male leaders, the seats offered by the Democratic Party represented a compromise that MFDP activists—and the national movement—could potentially harness in their favor. Activist Bayard Rustin, who served as an adviser for the MFDP at the convention, and MFDP chairman Aaron Henry agreed with this perspective, insisting that the compromise represented a step forward in the MFDP’s attempts at recognition as a legitimate delegation for the state. Rustin also understood that a rejection of the compromise created a roadblock for future collaborations with the national Democratic Party. Collectively, the national civil rights leaders at the convention were especially invested in showing support for the Democratic Party—with their eyes on the presidential elections that would soon follow later that fall. They were hopeful that the election of Lyndon B. Johnson, with Hubert Humphrey as his running mate, would help advance the cause of civil rights in the long term. Accepting the compromise in the short term, they argued, would show support for the Democratic Party and help set the stage for securing civil rights legislation in the years to come.

Hamer was not oblivious to these concerns, but she was far less interested in making nice with the national Democratic Party than she was with securing rights and representation for the Black people of Mississippi. She later offered a scathing critique of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders for their stance, describing them as “tool[s] of the Johnson administration.”68 For Hamer, compromise with white public officials, whatever the motivation, left Black people empty-handed. “Fannie Lou Hamer . . . didn’t seem to be interested in how we won the ’64 election or how we kept our dignity,” American politician Walter Mondale later observed, “she just wanted change [a]nd she wanted it now.”⁶⁹ Hamer’s urgency stemmed from her frustration with the slow pace of change in American politics. African Americans had waited long enough, Hamer reasoned, and the time for politicking and posturing was over. She pointed to a pattern of behavior among activists to compromise for the sake of progress—only to be further delayed in attaining their goals: “[T]hat’s what [has] been accepted for the past hundred years. You always just take a little taste and you say yes sir, thank you. You just [accept] that, but when we rebelled then that made folks take a second look. We didn’t take it. . . . To me it’s very simple. If we was free almost a hundred years ago and if we are really free citizens what is we going to take a little something for?”70 Hamer reasoned that it was high time for African Americans to take their fair share—full rights and actual representation, not a promise of future gains and symbolic gestures.

For these reasons, she rejected the two-seat compromise and saw its rejection as a moral and ethical stance. As she repeatedly reminded those who challenged her at the convention, the MFDP had traveled all the way to Atlantic City to demand representation and block the state party’s plans to seat an all-white delegation—with the blessing of the national party. Two seats on the convention floor were a far cry from these demands. In Hamer’s views, accepting such a compromise defied everything the MFDP stood for:

They did have other leaders, that hadn’t been in Mississippi, to tell us what we should expect and what we should accept and they wanted us to take a compromise—two votes at large. We refused to accept the compromise on the grounds of: if there’s something supposed to be mine three hundred years ago, I just don’t want anybody to hand me part of it today.⁷¹

Hamer’s remarks alluded to her unwavering belief in the ideals of American democracy. As she consistently argued, the US Constitution and the Fifteenth Amendment granted Black people voting rights as citizens of the United States. The MFDP’s demand for representation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention was a request to recognize a right already guaranteed to them. “All we want to do is be treated as human beings and . . . have a chance to elect our own officials,” she later explained. “We want people in office that’s going to represent us because so far we haven’t had it.”⁷²

Hamer’s strong resistance to the idea of a short-term compromise was also deeply rooted in her experiences as a Black Mississippian who had endured her share of hardships in the struggle for rights and freedom. She resisted the notion that the people of Mississippi should simply toe the line in agreement with national leaders—including those who knew little about the state and the unique challenges Black residents faced on a daily basis. Many of the civil rights leaders supporting the compromise, Hamer argued, lacked a full understanding of the local context informed by personal experiences and relationships, time spent in Mississippi, or knowledge of local affairs.

Although the national civil rights leaders at the Democratic National Convention framed their support of the two-seat compromise as part of “the big picture,” the confluence of gender and class politics lay just beneath the surface. This attitude was on full display when Young insisted that Hamer adhere to the advice of national leaders with more experience in the realm of politics.73 Others were especially offended by Hamer’s direct style of communication and her refusal to display behavior they deemed appropriate. In a meeting with Senator Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for vice president, Hamer directly pushed against the senator’s recommendation that the MFDP accept what amounted to an unfair offer of two seats. With characteristic aplomb, Hamer posed a direct question to the senator to highlight the gravity of the situation: “Well, Mr. Humphrey do you mean to tell me that your position is more important to you than four hundred thousand black people’s lives?” The question stung Humphrey who, according to Hamer, struggled to find the right words to respond.⁷⁴

In the aftermath of the meeting with Humphrey, several of the national civil rights leaders worked to keep Hamer out of the negotiating discussions.⁷⁵ Their lack of confidence in Hamer’s leadership abilities were revealed when King, Wilkins, and others arranged an impromptu meeting in King’s suite with members of the Credentials Committee and two representatives of the MFDP, Joseph Rauh and Ed King. Hamer was not initially included.⁷⁶ When she and others became aware of the meeting, they quickly rushed over to join, forcing the meeting into the hallway when it was clear the suite was already full. The quick actions on Hamer’s part emphasized her passion and her refusal to be sidelined by others—even prominent civil rights leaders. When one of Hamer’s associates suggested that she “listen to the leaders” who were advocating the acceptance of the two-seat compromise, Hamer fervently resisted. “Who [is] the leader?” she asked. “I know you ain’t been in Mississippi working with us. Who is he?” Reinforcing her point, she added, “I can’t see a leader leading me nowhere if he’s in N.Y. and I’m down here catching hell.”⁷⁷

Hamer’s remarks shed light on the main forces underpinning her philosophy that local perspectives are valuable and even outweigh those of nationally visible leaders, who often know little about the local context. This was also made clear in Hamer’s exchange with prominent Black politician and House of Representatives member Adam Clayton Powell Jr. who, after suggesting that she accept the compromise at the Democratic National Convention, asked Hamer if she knew who he was. Hamer confirmed her knowledge of the congressman but posed two rhetorical questions in response: “How many bales of cotton have you picked? How many beatings have you taken?”78 For Hamer, lived experiences were just as valuable—perhaps even more so—than formal education, visibility, and political access. And even more, decisions could not be made solely at the whim of one person. In Hamer’s vision, it required a collective effort. For this reason, Hamer refused to make decisions for all MFDP delegates—even when she was pressured to do so. “I said I’m not making a decision for the sixty-eight delegates,” she later explained. “I won’t do it.”⁷⁹ Though she played an active role in deliberations, she maintained the view that the ultimate decision to reject the compromise needed to be backed by all the MFDP delegates.

These events underscored Hamer’s unwavering commitment to group-centered leadership, which allowed for all voices to be involved in the decision-making process regardless of their gender, education, social background, or prior experience in politics.⁸⁰ SNCC leaders Ella Baker, James Forman, and Bob Moses understood this point. Not surprisingly, Hamer turned to them for advice on the matter. “I believe I’m right but I might be wrong,” she said to them. “I respect you and I will respect your decision. Whatever you say, if you think I’m wrong, even though I felt like I was right, I would have done it.” In their responses to Hamer, they reinforced the activist’s position on the value of ordinary leaders in the movement—especially local leaders who understood the unique challenges facing their communities. “They told me,” Hamer continued, “now look Mrs. Hamer, you’re the people living in Mississippi and you people know what you’ve experienced in Mississippi, we don’t have to tell you nothing [because] you make your own decision.”⁸¹

Their remarks eased Hamer’s concerns and reaffirmed her own convictions that a compromise was out of step with the goals of the MFDP. What Black people in Mississippi needed above all else was actual political representation—not a veneer of representation. With this in mind, Hamer, along with the help of Annie Devine and Victoria Gray, convinced the other MFDP delegates to reject the two-seat compromise.82 Speaking before the convention’s rules committee, Hamer passionately explained the limitations of such an offer: “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats.”⁸³ She elaborated further on this point in a subsequent interview: “We didn’t come way up there from Mississippi, 68 delegates subject to being killed on our way back, and we didn’t come all the way up there to compromise for no more than we’d gotten here. They only gave us two votes at large ’cause they knowed we wouldn’t have had nothing. I said we just didn’t come here for just that.”⁸⁴ Hamer refused to capitulate for the sake of politics. Her allegiance to the Black people of Mississippi came first, and she was determined not to make concessions that could ultimately hurt those she cared most about in Ruleville and Sunflower County.

Although Hamer and the other MFDP delegates failed to secure the seats they had hoped to obtain when they arrived in Atlantic City, they left a lasting impression on all who were present. Walter Mondale, who later became vice president of the United States, recalled being deeply moved by Hamer’s testimony: “She really blew it away.” Her testimony was so powerful that Mondale later admitted he could hardly remember the other testimonies delivered at the convention: “As soon as Fannie Lou Hamer started, it was all forgotten.”⁸⁵ African American baseball player Jackie Robinson reinforced these sentiments in a 1964 newspaper article. The “most moving of all-terrifying in its intensity and striking right at the heart of the awful situation,” Robinson noted, “was the story told in ringing emotion-filled words by Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer who told what happened to her after she led a group of 26 Negroes to register. . . . I don’t believe there could have been many indifferent ears or dry eyes as the story of her outrage poured forth over the television screens,” Robinson added.⁸⁶ His remarks mirrored those of countless others who were present at the convention—and even thousands who watched from the comfort of their homes. The MFDP’s challenge to the Democratic Party raised national awareness of the fight for civil rights for Black people and laid bare American hypocrisy on matters of freedom and democracy. It was a testament to Hamer’s leadership style and fundamental values.

In the aftermath of the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Hamer continued to play a vital role in mentoring and supporting young leaders in the movement and valuing their perspectives. In the summer of 1966, Hamer participated in the March Against Fear across Mississippi in support of James Meredith, the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Although Meredith’s enrollment at the university marked a pivotal moment in the fight for civil rights, the violent response from local white residents underscored the massive hold of white supremacy.87 Determined to “point out and challenge the all-pervasive overriding fear that dominates the day-to-day life of the Negro in the United States—and especially in Mississippi,” Meredith planned a 220-mile one-man march, beginning on Sunday, June 5, 1966.⁸⁸ On the second day of the march, miles south of Hernando, Mississippi, a white man fired three rounds at Meredith.

As Meredith lay in a hospital bed recovering from his wounds, civil rights leaders, representing SCLC, the NAACP, the Urban League, CORE, and SNCC convened a meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, to plan a response. In an effort to ensure that the march would continue, several civil rights leaders, including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, and SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael, agreed to gather at the location where Meredith had been attacked the following Sunday. As these activists finalized plans for the next leg of the march, they turned to Fannie Lou Hamer for help in coordinating local affairs.⁸⁹ She readily agreed to assist with plans, and on Sunday, June 12, she joined hundreds of activists determined to send a message that they would not be intimidated by white mob violence.⁹⁰

While the March Against Fear provided a significant platform to challenge white supremacy, it also represented a moment of transition in the movement. As civil rights activists from various organizations came together that summer, their diverse perspectives and political approaches rose to the surface. Leaders in SCLC, the NAACP, and the Urban League emphasized the significance of civil disobedience in the effort to secure Black political rights—even in the face of white supremacist violence. They also hoped to use the march as an opportunity to encourage Black Mississippians to back the proposed 1966 Civil Rights Bill, which included provisions for ending discrimination in housing, education, and the workforce.91

Carmichael, Floyd McKissick of CORE, and other young activists in the movement, however, demanded a more radical response. They viewed the shooting of Meredith as the final straw and argued that nonviolence as a political approach was inefficient.⁹² Instead they demanded greater political autonomy and advocated for Black selfdefense, calling on the Deacons for Defense and Justice, a Louisianabased Black paramilitary organization, to join the march.⁹³ Despite their many ideological differences, activists representing a variety of civil rights organizations moved ahead with plans to complete the March Against Fear. Hamer would play a vital role on the local level. She provided careful instructions about the specific route activists should take along the march and even led them in singing freedom songs.⁹⁴

On June 16, Carmichael and two other organizers were arrested for trespassing as they attempted to set up camp at an elementary school in Greenwood, Mississippi. Following his release from prison later that evening, Carmichael reinforced his position on the matter of Black political autonomy, shouting the phrase “Black Power.”⁹⁵ Carmichael’s declaration electrified many SNCC activists and local residents who desired more concrete results. Black Power, however, caused consternation among many others, especially older activists in the movement who feared that a more radical approach would dismantle the movement. Hamer’s response on the matter offered a glimpse into how she valued the contributions of young leaders in the movement, despite ideological differences. Although she fully supported nonviolent resistance, she also recognized the importance and utility of a more militant response to white supremacy. “I will agree with . . . Martin Luther King’s ‘nonviolent approach’ in some cases,” she once told a group of activists in Ruleville, Mississippi, “but in other cases, one has to take a more militant approach and I am not referring to turning the other cheek.”⁹⁶ When a group of reporters suggested that Carmichael was stirring up trouble because of his more militant stance, Hamer carefully corrected them. “I think it’s a very tragic thing that this country has driven people to this point in life,” she argued. “The shame is not on the people, but on the country.”97 Her support for Carmichael, much like her actions at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, revealed her grounded approach to leadership. She respected Carmichael’s leadership and believed it was important to allow him and other young activists to follow their own political instincts.

Hamer’s commitment to supporting and empowering leaders was only matched by her passion and radical honesty, which served as a source of inspiration for many. As Bob Moses later recalled, “Mrs. Hamer . . . spoke from her heart. And she spoke about what was real to her from all of her experience. . . . And what came through, always, was her soul. . . . [W]hat you felt when she spoke and when she sang,” Moses added, “was someone who was opening up her soul and really telling you what she felt and the pain that she had felt and the life that she had lived. And somehow she was able to convey that to people in a way in which [others] couldn’t.”⁹⁸ Hamer’s uncanny ability to inspire others through her words, her unwavering commitment to providing a space for leaders of all backgrounds, and her desire to empower others to tap into their leadership potential served as a model—then as now.