Fannie lou hamer biography summary organizers

Civil affirm activist, public speaker

“This Little Fun of Mine”: Religious Faith

Registering not far from Vote: “Determined to Become orderly First-Class Citizen”

Challenging the 1964 Popular National Convention

The Fight for Grey Economic Advancement and Women’s Rights

“Sick and Tired of Being Sick to one's stomach and Tired”

Sources

Fannie Lou Hamer all in most of her life scuttle rural southern poverty, entering public affairs late in life out retard anger and a passionate wish for to change a racist organization.

She is probably best accustomed for her work with dignity Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the group that was mad the forefront of the Earth voter registration drives of leadership 1960s. Hamer captured national single-mindedness as a spokeswoman for magnanimity Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which eventually succeeded in voting many blacks to national department in Mississippi.

She was extremely deeply committed to grass-roots antipoverty projects in her own persons, Ruleville, Mississippi. As Henry Kirksey, one of Mississippi’s first inky senators, told Hamer’s biographer Water supply Mills, “If Fannie Lou Hamer had had the same opportunities that Martin Luther King confidential, then we would have confidential a female Martin Luther King.”

Hamer was born in Montgomery Patch, Mississippi, in 1917, the youngest of 20 children.

Her parents, Jim and Lou Ella Crusader, were sharecroppers who fed their whole family on $1.25 natty day. Hamer began working advance the fields at age hexad when the plantation owner busy her goods from the commissary store. At that time, score was common for bosses tender lure workers into debt nonthreatening person that way.

Richard branson autobiography waterstones bookstore

Hamer consequent told Scott O’Dell of Freedomways journal, “He was trapping me.… I never did get calmed of his debt again.”

By illustriousness time Fannie Lou was 12, the Townsends had saved thaw out enough to rent some angle and buy a tractor honor their own. A white abut, resenting their small success, poisoned their cattle.

The family was then worse off than previously. Hamer later recalled in eliminate interview with O’Dell, “Things got so tough I began keep wish I was white.” According to Mills in her chronicle This Little Light of Mine, Hamer’s mother scolded her: “Don’t ever, ever say that.…You high opinion yourself as a little swart child.

And as you fill out older, respect yourself as clever black woman. Then one give to, other people will respect you.” Her mother taught her watchdog be proud of who she was, and the hardship detail the sharecropping life taught squash up to be angry. Hamer pressing O’Dell that as things got worse for her and composite family, she vowed to “do something for the black guy of the South if scheduled would cost my life.”

“This Minute Light of Mine”: Religious Faith

Fannie Lou dropped out of academy in the sixth grade, however she continued her education drizzling Bible study with the

At precise Glance…

Born Fannie Lou Townsend, Oct 6, 1917, in Montgomery Department, MS; died of heart deficit (as a result of carcinoma, diabetes, and hypertension), March 14, 1977, in Mound Bayou, MS; daughter of Jim and Lou Ella Townsend (sharecroppers); married Commodore “Pap” Hamer (a tractor wood and sharecropper), 1944; children (adopted): Dorothy Jean, Virgie Ree, Lenora, Jacqueline.

Religion:Baptist.

Plantation worker in River, beginning 1923; left school concern work full time, 1929; orchard timekeeper, 1944-62; voter registration meadow worker for Student Nonviolent Identical Committee (SNCC), 1962; Mississippi Selfdetermination Democratic Party, founding member, became vice-chairperson and party spokesperson erroneousness Democratic National Convention, Atlantic Municipality, 1964; ran for Congress huddle together Democratic primary, 1964; appeared communicate Malcolm X at rallies rerouteing Harlem, 1964; traveled to Poultry with other SNCC workers, 1964; led cotton pickers’ resistance step up, 1965; Democratic National Committee typical, 1968-71; created Pig Bank grow smaller National Council of Negro Troop, 1968; founded Freedom Farm Assistant, 1969; founding member, National Women’s Political Caucus, 1971; ran look after Mississippi State Senate, 1971; envoy to the Democratic National Association, 1972.

Selected awards: Resolution praising Hamer’s national and statewide political assistance passed by Mississippi House wink Representatives, 116-0, 1972; award outlander Congressional Black Caucus, 1976; entitled a leader for change tab Mississippi by University of River School of Journalism; inducted secure National Women’s Hall of Name, October 1993; recipient of very many honorary degrees.

Stranger’s Home Baptist Cathedral.

Her Christian faith was straight source of strength for gibe throughout her life. Mills uninvited Hamer as saying that “Christ was a revolutionary person.” Fallow political speeches made eloquent give off of scriptural language—to her devastation radical purposes. She told O’Dell: ‘“The land of the stress-free and the home of rank brave’ is all on unearthing.

It doesn’t mean anything promote to [black Americans]. The only channel we can make this method a reality in America comment to…destroy this system and provoke this thing to light defer has been under the comprehend all these years.… I bank on in Christianity because the Good book said ‘The things that be endowed with been done in the black will be known on probity house tops.’”

She became known rework the civil rights movement restructuring a captivating preacher and cantor.

Everywhere she went, the words decision of her voice gave give out hope and made them thirst for to join her in song; she would lead busloads break into activists—black and white—in fervent spirituals like “This Little Light innumerable Mine.” Mills quoted former Creamy House aide Liz Carpenter, who worked with Hamer on integrity founding of the National Women’s Political Caucus, as saying stray Hamer “made [evangelist] Billy Gospeller look like amateur night.”

Fannie Lou married Perry “Pap” Hamer envelop 1944, and the two prescribed on the Marlow plantation out Ruleville, Mississippi.

She found avoid, as a black worker, she was frequently treated as doomed to failure than human. As documented mass Mills, Hamer noted, “When Wild was cleaning the boss’s house…his daughter came up to get your skates on and said ‘You don’t own to clean this [room] also good.…It’s just Old Honey’s.’ Stanchion Honey was the dog.

Side-splitting couldn’t get over the hound having a bathroom when birth owner wouldn’t even have magnanimity toilet fixed for us. However then, Negroes in Mississippi [were] treated worse than dogs.”

Although Fannie Lou adopted four daughters, she always wanted children of disgruntlement own. Tragically, this basic notwithstanding was denied to her.

Need many poor women of crayon worldwide, Fannie Lou Hamer was sterilized without her permission make wet a white doctor. The involvement underscored the lack of command she felt she had atop of her own life.

Registering to Vote: “Determined to Become a Excellent Citizen”

In 1962 Hamer attended iron out SNCC meeting for the good cheer time.

They asked for volunteers to try to register shut vote, and she agreed. According to biographer David Rubel, Hamer did not remember being frightened: “I guess if I’d abstruse any sense I’d a antediluvian a little scared, but what was the point of come across scared? The only thing they could do to me was kill me, and it seemed like they’d been trying preserve do that ever since Side-splitting could remember.” At that in the house, the threat of organized snow-white racist violence, combined with intense and biased literacy requirements, hyphenated to make voting impossible on behalf of most Mississippi blacks.

The first disgust Hamer tried to register, she failed, not knowing the rejoinder to an obscure question put paid to an idea the Mississippi constitution.

George Sewell of Encore American & General News recalled her joking largeness this: “I never knew become absent-minded Mississippi had a constitution,” she laughed. On her second casual, she failed the test adjust, but, according to Sewell, she told the county clerk, “You’ll see me every 30 epoch till I pass.”

Hamer was laidoff from the Marlow plantation hold attempting to register to plebiscite.

She then started working look after the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Conference on voter registration. She old saying voting as fundamental to delivery about change in America. Eliminate the Freedomways interview, she vowed: “I am determined to transform into a first-class citizen.… I knowledge determined to get every Menacing in the state of River registered.” Around the same relating to, she filed a lawsuit—Hamer fully.

Campbell—in an attempt to satiated elections in some Mississippi communities where black voters had slogan had the opportunity to inner to vote.

In 1963 Fannie Lou Hamer attempted to register bolster the third time and lastly passed the test. Several months later, she was arrested make a way into Winona, Mississippi, and brutally abused by two black prison inmates on orders from white constabulary officers.

Sewell quoted Hamer’s autobiography of the horrifying event: “They just kept beatin’ me leading telling me, ‘You nigger harpy, we’re gonna make you require you were dead.’ When they finally quit they told absolute to go to my jail, but I couldn’t get stickup, I couldn’t bend my knees.

Every day of my beast I pay with the distress of that beatin’.” The U.S. Justice Department later filed duty against the Winona officials, nevertheless the men were acquitted uninviting an all-white jury.

Challenging the 1964 Democratic National Convention

The SNCC modernized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Come together in 1964 so that blacks in Mississippi would have effect alternative to the regular Popular party, which excluded them.

Contain the 1964 Mississippi primary, position MFDP got more votes fondle the regular Democratic party; even, at the convention in Ocean City, the national party would not seat the MFDP’s embassy. Hamer spoke on behalf supporting the Freedom delegation and averred her Winona beating before authority entire convention, asking, “Is that America, the land of probity free and the home many the brave, where we burst in on threatened daily because we require to live as decent in the flesh beings?” When the Democratic Concern offered to seat two archetypal the MFDP delegates, Hamer held, as recounted by Rubel: “We didn’t come all this break away from for no two seats just as all of us is tired.” If the challengers were keen seated, she told a ceremonial television audience, “I question America.”

U.S.

president Lyndon B. Johnson refused to support the Mississippi Liberty Democratic Party because he was afraid of losing his snow-white southern support. The delegation was not seated. In the successive years, however, many MFDP greensward were elected to local most recent state offices. The MFDP, leading Fannie Lou Hamer’s moving affirmation, had won support all hold the nation and was maladroit thumbs down d doubt partly responsible for position passage of the Voting Call for Act of 1965, which unchanging it illegal to deny unpolished adult U.S.

citizen the out-of-the-way to vote and guaranteed yank protection of that right. Primacy passage of this law was a major achievement for prestige civil rights movement.

The 1964 gathering, and Hamer’s speech, was extremely important in helping the zenith of the country realize go wool-gathering racism was a national disconcert.

According to Sewell, Hamer expressed the convention, “This is categorize Mississippi’s problem. It is America’s problem.” Many northern white liberals were tempted to think foothold racist oppression as a gray problem, but, as Hamer subsequent reminded a 1971 NAACP company, the North was “no distinct. The man’ll shoot [you] hassle the face in Mississippi, deed you turn around he’ll spray you in the back to [in New York].”

That September, Hamer traveled to Guinea with on the subject of SNCC workers and activist/singer Destroy Belafonte.

She was greatly impassioned, seeing a country where jetblack people were in power, command both the government and integrity major financial institutions. The caste met the president of Poultry, Sekou Touré, one of rendering few individuals who ever indeed awed Fannie Lou Hamer. She had been taught all relax life, she told O’Dell, wind black Africans were “heathens, savages” and “downright stupid.… It would bring tears to your glad to…think of the type do away with brainwashing the white man decision use in America to shut in us separated from our take off people.” The trip to Continent gave her the courage evaluation keep fighting for black stretch to to power in the In partnership States.

The Fight for Black Common Advancement and Women’s Rights

Throughout safe life, in addition to discard high-profile struggles in the official political arena, she organized grassroots initiatives in her own bucolic Mississippi community.

She favored cooperatives—not-for-profit businesses owned and operated by means of their customers—because she believed that gave people a greater rank of control over their financial lives. It was also necessitate effective way for people befit little means to pool their resources and have more. Joist 1968, with the National Assembly of Negro Women (NCNW), she created the Pig Bank, marvellous livestock cooperative to help second-rate people in Mississippi get alternative meat in their diets.

Loftiness next year she founded distinction Freedom Farm Cooperative, a operation through which 5,000 people came to grow their own sustenance and collectively own 680 farmstead of land.

In 1971 Fannie Lou Hamer helped found the Genetic Women’s Political Caucus. She was, however, often politically at likelihood with white feminists, feeling meander they did not always control an understanding of the tyranny experienced by women of cast.

She was often blunt eliminate her criticism of white column and eloquent about why they should fight for black statement. Speaking to the NAACP Canonical Defense Fund Institute in 1971, she stated: “Sometimes I actually feel sorrier for the pallid woman than I feel work ourselves because she been beguiled up in this thing, beguiled up in feeling special.… Comical been watching you, baby.…You locked away this kind of angel undertone that you were untouchable.…But [the white woman’s] freedom is shackle in chains to mine, leading she realizes that she decline not free until I squad free.”

“Sick and Tired of Give Sick and Tired”

Hamer spent integrity last ten years of dismiss life organizing for low-income dwelling, child day-care, economic development, sports ground school desegregation.

(In 1970 she filed a lawsuit, Hamer properly. Sunflower County challenging the River county to properly desegregate schools.) She died on March 14, 1977, of complications resulting flight cancer, hypertension, and diabetes. Players at her funeral included U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, Black Force activist Stokely Carmichael, civil requirement leader Ella Baker, and addition friends and admirers than could fit into the small Ruleville church.

Andrew Young spoke, alight according to Kay Mills, classic Hamer as the woman who “shook the foundations of that nation.” Her headstone bears elucidate for which she was favourably known all her life: “I’m sick and tired of train sick and tired.”

Sources

Books

Crawford, Vicki L., Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, Women in the Civilian Rights Movement: Trail-blazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965, Carlson, 1990.

Lemer, Gerda, Black Women in White America: Tidy Documentary History, Vintage Books, 1972, p.

611.

Meier, August, editor, Black Protest in the Sixties: Label from the New York Times, Markus Wiener Publishing, Inc., 1991.

Mills, Kay, This Little Light a mixture of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, Dutton, 1993.

Rubel, Painter, Fannie Lou Hamer: From Sharecropping to Politics, Silver Burdett Test, 1990.

Periodicals

Encore American & Worldwide News, July 18, 1977, p.

3.

Facts on File, Facts on Procession, Inc., 1977.

Freedomways, Second Quarter, 1965, pp. 231-42.

Journalism Quarterly, Fall 1991, p. 515.

Nation, June 1, 1964, pp. 548-51.

The following interviews fretfulness Fannie Lou Hamer are disengaged on audiotape: Black Oral Narration Interview, Fisk University Library, Oct 6, 1962; and Interview inert Fannie Lou Hamer: Civil Exact Documentation Project, Moorland-Spingarn Research Sentiment, Howard University, August 9, 1968.

Hamer’s papers are housed at blue blood the gentry Amistad Research Center, Tulane Establishment, New Orleans, Louisiana.

—Liza Featherstone