SNCC

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) arrived in Ruleville, Mississippi, in August 1962, at the time when Fourty-four-year-old Fannie Lou Hamer attempted to vote for the first time.

Hamer was attracted to SNCC because the organization demonstrated a very fervent commitment to "local autonomy [as] the basis of sustained militancy". The organization also had a strong belief that the movement would progress fastest if it was served by building pockets of community leadership.

• During August of 1962 some members of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), [an umbrella coalition of major civil rights organizations i.e, The National Associatinon for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)[1], The National Urban League (NUL), The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)[2], The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)[[3]], and SNCC decided to visit Ruleville and teach people how to register to vote.

• Hamer was one of the first people to volunteer to go to Indianola to secure voting rights.

• Hamer emerged as a leader among the group. She immediately saw the vision for the liberation of poor blacks in the south. " I could just see myself voting people outa office that I know was wrong and didn't do nothin' to help the poor," Hamer exclaimed.

For Hamer the vote symbolized hope and empowerment of the individual.

• Hamer did not realize the grave dangers that were implicated in the task of trying to obtain a basic democratic right. It wasn't until years after she had almost seen death a number of times that she realized how dangerous her feats were: " I guess if I'd any sense I'da been a little scared. The only thing they could do to me was kill me and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember" (Lee26).

Indianola

Winona

• During her work with the summer campaign she decided to run against Jamie Whitten for the Second Congressional District House of Representatives seat. On March 20, 1964 Hamer qualified to run against Whitten and she ws sponsored by COFO. At the same time her ex plantation master threatened that she would be killed.

• Hamer's campaign was characterized by her belief that electoral politics could be made to work for black people if the process were incluseive insead of exclusive. She planned to create a forumula that would bring justice to the Mississippians. Hamer lost the race by a margin of 35,218 to 621 votes but she did not give up hope.

• • Bob Moses noticed Hamer's perseverence and her growing importance to local civil rights developments in Mississippi. Her strong qualities made her a perfect candidate for the success ofMississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the liberation of the blacks in the Delta.

• On June 8, 1964, Hamer participated in a public COFO sponsored hearing held at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. One of the main purposes of the hearing was to make a case for federal protection for civil rights volunteers during the imminent Freedom Summer campaign.

• • During the hearing Hamer expressed her voter registration struggles in Indianola, her eviction as a cause of her registration, her Winona experience, Ruleville's curfew, and forced sterilizations that rural women often faced. Hamer herself was a victim of forced sterilization in 1961. Hamer fought diligently for Reproductive Justice.

• On June 19, 1964 Hamer filed a complaint against the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi targeting: the system of unpledged electors for presidency, the discriminatory practice of determining black registration qualifications, and the voiding of recent precinct elections that excluded blacks. After this suit Hamer filed several subsequent suits for other issues of justice and freedom.