Fannie
Lou Hamer (nee Fannie Lou Townsend) was an African-American civil rights leader
and political activist. She fearlessly worked to improve the lives of African-Americans
despite numerous experiences of extreme racial injustice. Fannie Lou Hamer was
sterilized without her knowledge by a white doctor as part of the state of Mississippi's
plan to reduce the number of Black people. In 1962 she began working to help poor
Black people to vote, and was harassed, fired from her job and received numerous
death threats. In 1963, she and other voting activists were falsely arrested and
viciously beaten by police. After she recovered, she went right back to working
for civil rights. She helped to organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's
"Freedom Summer" in Mississippi in 1964 and then became Vice-Chair of the "Freedom
Democrats" which was organized to challenge the all-white, anti-civil rights
delegation to the Democratic National Convention. In 1969, Fannie Lou Hamer helped
start the Freedom Farm Cooperative, a land cooperative that lent poor farmers
money to purchase land they could live on and farm. She was actively involved
in grassroots Head Start programs and in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's
Campaign. She helped convene the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1970 and
when the National Council of Negro Women created the Fannie Lou Hamer Day Care
Center, she became the chair of its Board of Directors. Fannie Lou Hamer received
many honors and awards for her dedication to improving the lives of the poor,
and her legacy is remembered today as an important source of inspiration for a
better world.
