FANNIE LOU HAMER OCTOBER 6-1917

 

Murphy Browne © October 6, 2020 

 

FANNIE LOU HAMER OCTOBER 6-1917 

 

Fannie Lou Hamer who is one of my sheores would have been 103 years old today on October 6, 2020. She was an African American civil rights leader and political activist who worked to improve the lives of African Americans despite experiencing extreme racial injustice, including state and police violence. In 1961 Hamer, like thousands of African American women living in Mississippi, was sterilized without her knowledge by a White doctor as part of the state of Mississippi's plan to reduce the population of African Americans. 

 

 

In 1962 Hamer began working to help African Americans register to vote. She was harassed, fired from her job and received numerous death threats. In 1963, Hamer and other activists were arrested and viciously beaten. Hamer was released on June 12, 1963. She needed more than a month to recuperate from the beatings and never fully recovered. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, including a blood clot over her left eye and permanent damage on one of her kidneys, she returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election, in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. Despite suffering permanent kidney damage, permanent damage to her left eye and a permanent limp Fannie Lou Hamer continued her quest to ensure her community gained their civil rights. 

 

 

She helped to organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) "Freedom Summer" in Mississippi in 1964 and became Vice-Chair of the "Freedom Democrats" which was organized to challenge the all-White, anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-RoVzAqhYk) In 1969, Hamer co-founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative, which helped struggling farmers acquire land. She was actively involved in grassroots Head Start programs and in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. She helped convene the National Women's Political Caucus in 1970 and when the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) created the Fannie Lou Hamer Day Care Center, she became the chair of its Board of Directors. 

 

 

Hamer's life is documented in several biographies, including This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, written by Kay Mills and published in 1993. 

 

 

 

Fannie Lou Hamer transitioned to the ancestral realm on March 14, 1977 at 59 years old. She never recovered from the vicious assault (she suffered permanent kidney damage, permanent damage to her left eye and a permanent limp) to which she was subjected in 1963. She was buried in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi. Her tombstone is engraved with one of her famous quotes, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."  

 

Murphy Browne © October 6, 2020