Mississippi Freedom Labor Union

• Hamer supported many different progressive economic projects. One of the main projects she supported actively was the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union (MFLU, which was a union of black domestic workers and day laborers. The MFLU placed great emphasis on home, land and business ownership in an effort to thwart economic exploitation in Mississippi.

• In 1965 in Shaw Mississippi, one of the first mass organizing efforts of the organization was to gather about a hundred individuals to get workers to strike to raise their wages to $1.25 an hour. The MFLU largely responded to the multitudes of sharecroppers and tenant farmers who were being exploited by the government due to Mechanization and industrialization.

• Hamer had a very pinnacle involvement and contribution to the MFLU. She was one of the Union's most outspoken advocators of economic liberation. She endorsed the union in her speeches during her travel to gather support and awareness for the MFDP. She inspired the members of the union and she often helped to fund raise for the union. She soon became and adopted leader of the Union because she was a model of the transformative results of activism given that she came from a background of sharecropping.

• Hamer helped with many MFLU strikes particularly during the summer of 1965. Through striking she sought to battle the forces that placed unbearable control and restrictions over African American people's destiny.

• Hamer's influence was felt increasingly with more fervor during the second wave of MFLU strike activity beginning during that 1965 summer. By June 4 1965, four hundred of the one thousand people on strike in the Delta were from Fannie Lou Hamer's home town.

• NEWSFLASHOn May 31,1965 approximately eighty black tenant farmers walked off the Andrews slave plantation.

• Hamer's speeches in response to the Andrews incident were about the problems of lack of support for the union and the use of replacement workers. She strongly urged the workers to use their own agency to make changes within the system," We got to stop the nervous Nellies and the Toms from going to the Man's place. I don't believe in killing, but a good whipping behind the bushes wouldn't hurt them." (Hamer) In this statement Hamer called out the "middle-class Negroes" who she felt were attempting to undermine the movement with their complacency and political betrayal. "Hamer's political conception of class based on material circumstances and was measurable in degrees of racial loyalty" (Lee 131) Hamer was in fact a Racial Loyalist. She believed in the effect that a community of blacks working together could have upon the movement for freedom and justice within the confines of the black community in America.

• The MFLU fell apart during the winter. The weather posed many problems and many of the workers needed to return to the plantations to survive the winter. There was also word of internal discord that begun to plague the organization. Funding was also a serious problem for the organization during the end of the year. Hamer did not give up on the fight for freedom, instead of letting her hopes die with the MFLU she decided to start The Freedom Farm.

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