Fannie Lou Hamer

BORN: OCTOBER 6, 1917, RULEVILLE, MS

DIED: MARCH 14, 1977, MOUND BAYOU, MS

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Fannie Lou Hamer sat at a table to testify before the Credentials Committee at the 1964 National Democratic Convention. She spoke plainly, powerfully, and passionately, detailing her efforts and those of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to register to vote as first-class citizens of the United States. In her state, Blacks were not represented by the Democratic Party. If the MFDP was not recognized and seated, Fannie stated in front of the television cameras, “I question America.”

Fannie was an activist, an orator, a community organizer, and a courageous leader of the civil rights movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Born and raised on Mississippi cotton plantations where she and members of her family were sharecroppers, Fannie didn’t realize she had the right to vote until she was forty-four years old.

Fannie was a fearless freedom fighter during a time when less than two percent of the Black population in Mississippi was registered to vote and such activism was dangerous. Fannie was evicted from her home in Ruleville for trying to register, she was brutally beaten for organizing, and her family and friends were shot at to deter her activism.

Despite these efforts to silence her, Fannie continued to raise her voice, even teaching citizenship classes to help educate her neighbors about their voting rights. She sang African American spirituals as a part of her speeches to inspire and encourage others to continue challenging the system of white supremacy. She cofounded the MFDP and confronted the all-white delegation. Although not seated in 1964, by the 1968 Democratic Convention, the MFDP became the official delegation of the state. That year Fannie also organized a local Freedom Farm and pig bank, mobilizing her community to raise food to feed themselves. In 1971, she ran for Congress. Nationally and locally, Fannie was tireless in her efforts to organize woman and poor people.

Although she had a powerful, charismatic presence, poor health from childhood polio, diabetes, cancer, and complications from brutal beatings contributed to her death at the age of fifty-nine, in 1977.