Ms. Hamer's Life

Early Life

Fannie Lou Townsend was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was only two generations removed from slavery. Hamer was the youngest of 20 children- 14 boys and 6 girls. Her parents were sharecroppers[1], a position where farmers lived on a divided plantation and received a share of the crop in return for working the land. Fannie Lou began contributing to the sharecropping process at the young age of 6. Her family was plauged by debt peonage, inherent in sharecropping, and racist white neighbors determined to keep Negroes in their place. By age 12, as a 6th grader, Fannie Lou Hamer was forced to drop out of school to better assist her family with the sharecropping process.

Sharecropping

In 1944, Fannie Lou married another sharecropper Perry "Pap" Hamer. They peacefully lived and worked on the Marlow plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi for 18 years. The Hamers, unable to have children adopted two girls, Dorothy Jean and Vergie Ree. At age 44, during a church meeting in 1962, hosted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)[2] and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating CommitteeSNCC, Fannie Lou Hamer learned that Black persons had a right to vote. This peice of knowledge would change her life forever and disrupt Marlow plantation conditions. On August 31, 1962 Fannie Lou boarded a bus to register to vote. She was unable to register because she failed the literacy test, one of many policies designed to keep blacks disenfranchised[3]. Nonetheless, on the next day, Fannie Lou Hamer was kicked off of the plantation she had worked on for nearly two decades. This action solidified her involvement in the movement for black voter rights.

Vote At Any Cost

Fannie Lou Hamer immediatley joined SNCC as a field organizer. She also briefly worked with the SCLC on welfare reform. After her first two unsuccessful attempts to obtain the vote, on January 10, 1963, Fannie Lou passed the literacy test and successfully registered to vote. Her fight had only begun. Intent on educating other black persons of their rights, Fannie Lou traveled extensively with SNCC. At Winona Bus Station, while returning home from a registration drive in South Carolina in June of 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer and fellow activists were intercepted by the police, jailed for a few days, and severely beaten. While Fannie Lou Hamer was imprisoned, Medgar Evers [4], regional National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)[5] director for Jackson, Mississippi was killed in his driveway over the right to vote. Hamer refused to be intimidated. She continued relentlessly in her pursuit of black voting rights.

Heightened Activism

1964 was an eventful year for Fannie Lou. In the summer of 1964 SNCC, in cooperation with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)[6] and the NAACP organized Freedom Summer to which Hamer contributed. On a local level, after being barred from attending a regional Democratic Party Meeting, Fannie Lou Hamer helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP sought to challenge white domination of the Democratic Party. The MFDP sent 68 representatives in August 1964 to the Democratic National Committee meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hamer was one of the representatives who testified before the Democratic Party's Credentials Committee. Her rousing address on the plight of black voters, broadcast on all the major television networks on August 22, 1964, was powerful and widely received despite Lyndon Johnson’s questionable attempts at blocking her testimony (by holding a last minute press conference).

Slow Progress

Although President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965[7], Fannie Lou’s work as an activist was far from over. In 1965, Hamer ran for Congress and challenged the seating of Mississippi representatives in the House of Representatives. In 1968, Fannie Lou Hamer received a seat at the Democratic National Convention, only four years after the Atlantic City debacle. She was the first women from Mississippi, and the first African- American since Reconstruction’s end, to hold a seat. She was greeted with a standing ovation.

Even More Campaigns

The latter years of Fannie Lou Hamer’s life were a testament to her strength of purpose in creating better conditions for black persons in America. She worked tirelessly to better conditions in Mississippi by organizing grassroots anti-poverty campaigns. She helped bring low cost housing to her hometown; she helped sue the local school system on behalf of a black principal. Hamer also worked with farmers. After the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union's failure, she helped create a farm cooperative, called The Freedom Farm born out of a desire to give black farmers autonomy- a conception which sharecropping had prevented her and her family from having, and which also helped the poor obtain more meat in their diet. The Delta Ministry, an extensive community development program was also part of Fannie Lou’s legacy. Fannie Lou was associated with Vietnam War protests. In 1976 before being diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing a radical mastectomy, Fannie Lou Hamer also participated in a demonstration against Medicare cuts.

Hamer's Light Shines On

Her goals were multi-faceted, and her legacy immense. On March 14, 1977 the world lost an icon, and the movement lost an organic intellectual. Fannie Lou Hamer died of cancer in a hospital in Mississippi not more than twenty miles from where she had lived most of her adult life. Her light shines on.

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