Winona

• On Monday, June 1963, a group of Mississippi citizens who had been doing voter registration training with Annelle Ponder set out for Greenwood on a Greyhound us. They were destined for Charleston, South Carolina, where they planned to organize teacher-training classes for voter registration. The group included John Brown, Bernard Washington, Euvester Simpson, June Johnson, Rosemary Freeman, James West, Annelle Ponder, and Fannie Lou Hamer.
• Their return journey was forced to halt once they arrived in Winona, Mississippi.
  • Apparently the bus driver was making some suspicious calls at each stop and when they arrived in Winona for a rest to get some food they were greeted by a Police chief, a highway patrolman, a local sheriff, and a crowd of white civilians.
  • Upon entering the restaurant to order food they were denied service and forced out of their seats. The police chief and the highway patrolman pulled out their billy clubs and assaulted them, saying, "Naw, niggers eat on the other side. Ya'll get out--get out." Ponder immediately suggested that they collect the information of the officers. 16-year-old June Johnson immediately went outside and started copying down the officer's information when a white spectator went inside and informed the police officer. Once the officer found out he came outside with the rest of his racist entourage and began to round up the members of the group to take them to jail. Hamer, who was still on the bus, tried to interject but she was soon added to the group once the highway patrolman yelled, "Get that black son of a bitch, too! Bring her down in the other car."
  • The members of the group were beaten and assaulted brutally to the point of bloodshed and impaired limbs. Hamer was specifically ordered to be beaten by two black prisoners. They made her lie on the bed on her stomach and the man beat her until he gave out. She was beat over the head and sexually harassed. She recalled that one of the state patrolmen "pulled my dress over my head and tried to feel under my clothes in the room with all those men." This was one of the most devastating experiences of Hamer's life. At one point she wished they would have knocked her dead so she wouldn't have to feel the pain anymore.
  • The beating left Hamer in bad physical health. She had suffered from polio as a child and the beating exacerbated the limp that she incurred due to polio. Her fingers could not bend, she was blinded in her left eye, and her kidneys were permanently damaged.
• Some civil rights workers came to the jail to inquire about the groups whereabouts and they too were jailed. One particular person was Lawrence Guyot, who was locked in a cell and transported to another jail to be beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan. After he returned to Winona he was brutally beaten again and forced to disorobe. According to Hamer's testimony the sadistic assailants had also "taken a piece of paper and tried to burn Guyot's private off." Hamer and the others were detained for three days.
• On September 9, 1963 the justice department filed a suit agains five of the officers. They were charged with seven accounts of conspiraccy to deprive the Negroes of their civil rights.

• All of the officers were acquitted. Hamer presented her experiences during her presentation at the 1964 Democratic Party National Convention.
• Hamer attempted to work with the Mississippi Democratic Party on a Precinct level but she did not have much success. Soon Hamer and SNCC activists decided to fight back by establishing a political party of their own called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

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