Fannie Lou Hamer (born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader. October 6 is the 279th day of the year (280th in leap years). ... Year 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... For the Lebanese political coalition, see March 14 Alliance. ... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ... Voting rights refers to the right of a person to vote in an election. ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. ... Martin Luther King is perhaps most famous for his I Have a Dream speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom This article is about the civil rights movement following the Brown v. ...

She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi's "Freedom Summer" for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant champion of civil rights. This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched during the summer of 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in the southern states. ... The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC, pronounced snick) was one of the primary institutions of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. ... The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was an American political party created in the state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement. ... The 1964 Democratic National Convention took place at the Atlantic City Convention Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 24 - 27, 1964. ... Map of Atlantic City in Atlantic County Coordinates: Country United States State New Jersey County Atlantic Incorporated March 1854  - Mayor Bob Levy Area    - City 44. ... This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library of Congress. ...

Biography

Early life

Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, on October 6, 1917, the youngest of 20 children as the granddaughter of slaves. Her parents, in common with most African Americans in the Mississippi Delta, were sharecroppers on a cotton plantation. Montgomery County is a county located in the state of Mississippi. ... The shared flood plain of the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers The Mississippi Delta is the distinct northwest section of the state of Mississippi that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. ... Sharecropping is a system of farming in which employee farmers work a parcel of land in return for a fraction of the parcels crops. ... // This article is about crop plantations. ...

Because Fannie Lou would help them in their work in the fields, she had little time for school and never received more than a sixth-grade education. She married Perry "Pap" Hamer in 1942 and devoted herself to her family life and her job, which was on a plantation as a "timekeeper".

Beginnings of activism

While she was not yet a civil rights activist, Hamer attended one or more of the annual conferences of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi during the early 1950s. The RCNL was led by wealthy black surgeon and businessman, Dr. T.R.M. Howard, and was a combination civil rights and self-help organization. The annual RCNL conferences featured entertainers, such as Mahalia Jackson, speakers, such as Thurgood Marshall and Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan, and panels on voting rights and other civil rights issues. The Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) was probably the leading civil rights organization in Mississippi during the early 1950s. ... Mound Bayou is a city in Bolivar County, Mississippi, United States. ... Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (T.R.M. Howard) (March 4, 1908 —- May 1, 1976) was an African American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, surgeon, and entrepreneur. ... Mahalia Jackson Mahalia Jackson (October 26, 1911–January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer, widely regarded as the best in the history of the genre. ... Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. ... Charles Coles Diggs, Jr. ...

On August 23, 1962, Rev. James Bevel, an organizer for SNCC and an associate of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a sermon in Ruleville and followed it with an appeal to those assembled to register to vote. Black people who registered to vote in the South faced serious hardships at that time due to institutionalized racism, including harassment, the loss of their jobs, and physical beatings and lynchings; nonetheless, Hamer was the first volunteer. She later said, "I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been scared - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they [white people] could do was kill me, and it seemed they'd been trying to do that a little at a time since I could remember." August 23 is the 235th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (236th in leap years), with 130 days remaining. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar). ... Willmcw 21:30, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC) Categories: Possible copyright violations ... Martin Luther King, Jr. ... Voter registration is the requirement in some democracies for citizens to check in with some central registry before being allowed to vote in elections. ... Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime · Hate groups Genocide · Holocaust · Pogrom Ethnocide · Ethnic cleansing · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Neo-Nazism · Supremacism Kahanism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights · Gay rights Womens/Universal suffrage · Mens rights Childrens rights · Youth rights Disability... Lynching is a form of violence, usually murder, conceived of by its perpetrators as extra legal punishment for offenders or as a terrorist method of enforcing social domination. ...

On August 31, she traveled on a rented bus with other attendees of Rev. Bevel's sermon to Indianola, Mississippi to register. In what would become a signature trait of Hamer's activist career, she began singing Christian hymns, such as "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "This Little Light of Mine," to the group in order to bolster their resolve. The hymns also reflected Hamer's belief that the civil rights struggle was a deeply spiritual one. By the next day, she had been harassed by police, fired from her job, and received a death threat from the Ku Klux Klan. August 31 is the 243rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (244th in leap years), with 122 days remaining. ... The city of Indianola,MS Indianola is a city in Sunflower County, Mississippi, United States. ... Christians believe that Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant (see Hebrews 8:6). ... A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a god or other religiously significant figure. ... Members of the second Ku Klux Klan at a rally during the 1920s. ...

Hamer's courage and leadership in Indianola came to the attention of SNCC organizer Bob Moses, who dispatched Charles McLaurin from the organization with instructions to find "the lady who sings the hymns". McLaurin found and recruited Hamer, and though she remained based in Mississippi, she began traveling around the South doing activist work for the organization.

On June 9, 1963, Hamer was on her way to Charleston, South Carolina, with other activists for a SNCC conference. Stopping in Winona, Mississippi, for a meal, the group was arrested on a false charge and jailed by white policemen. Once in jail, Hamer and her colleagues were beaten savagely by the police, almost to the point of death. June 9 is the 160th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (161st in leap years), with 205 days remaining. ... 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1963 calendar). ... Nickname: The Palmetto City Motto: Aedes Mores Juraque Curat (She cares for her temples, customs, and rights) Location of Charleston in South Carolina. ... Winona is a city located in Montgomery County, Mississippi. ...

Released on June 12, she needed more than a month to recover. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the"Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election, in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer, most of whom were young, white, and from northern states, as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature. June 12 is the 163rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (164th in leap years), with 202 days remaining. ... An election is a decision making process where people choose people to hold official offices. ...

Hamer at The Democratic National Convention

In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or "Freedom Democrats" for short, was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year as not representative of all Mississippians. Hamer was elected Vice-Chair.

The Freedom Democrat' efforts drew national attention to the plight of African-Americans in Mississippi, and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for a second term; their success would mean that other Southern delegations, who were already leaning toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, would publicly break from the convention's decision to nominate Johnson — meaning in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states' electoral votes in the election. Hamer, singing her signature hymns, drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her in speaking to his advisors as "that illiterate woman". The presidential seal was first used by President Hayes in 1880 and last modified in 1959 by adding the 50th star for Hawaii. ... “LBJ” redirects here. ... The Democratic Party is one of two major political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party. ... The Republican Party, often called the GOP (for Grand Old Party, although one early citation described it as the Gallant Old Party) [1], is one of the two major political parties in the United States. ... Barry Morris Goldwater (January 1, 1909 – May 29, 1998[1]) was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–87) and the Republican Partys nominee for President in the 1964 election. ... The United States Electoral College is the electoral college that chooses the President and Vice President of the United States at the conclusion of each Presidential election. ...

Hamer was invited, along with the rest of the MFDP officers, to address the Convention's Credentials Committee. She recounted the problems she had encountered in registration, and the ordeal of the jail in Winona, and, near tears, concluded:

"All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?"

In Washington, D.C., Johnson panicked, calling an emergency press conference in an effort to divert press coverage away from Hamer's testimony; but many television networks ran the speech unedited on their late news programs that night. The Credentials Committee received thousand of calls and letters in support of the Freedom Democrats. Nicholson took the copy Key had given him to a printer, who published it as a broadside on 17 September, 1814 under the title Defence of Fort McHenry, with a note explaining the circumstances of its writing. ... Nickname: DC, The District Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Location of Washington, D.C., in relation to the states Maryland and Virginia Coordinates: Country United States Federal District District of Columbia Government  - Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D)  - City Council Chairperson: Vincent C. Gray (D) Ward 1: Jim Graham (D... A joint press conference by U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the White House. ... A television network is a distribution network for television content whereby a central operation provides programming for many television stations. ...

Johnson then dispatched several trusted Democratic Party operatives to attempt to negotiate with the Freedom Democrats, including Senator Hubert Humphrey (who was campaigning for the Vice-Presidential nomination), Walter Mondale, Walter Reuther, and J. Edgar Hoover. They suggested a compromise which would give the MFDP two seats in exchange for other concessions, and secured the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the plan. But when Humphrey outlined the compromise, saying that his position on the ticket was at stake, Hamer, invoking her Christian beliefs, sharply rebuked him: Seal of the U.S. Senate Federal courts Supreme Court Chief Justice Associate Justices Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures State Courts Counties, Cities, and Towns Other countries Politics Portal      Senate composition following 2006 elections The United States Senate is... Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. ... The Vice President of the United States is the second-highest executive official of the United States government, the person who is, in the words of Adlai Stevenson, a heartbeat from the presidency. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Walter Philip Reuther (September 1, 1907 – May 10, 1970) was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic party]] in the mid 20th century. ... Hoover in 1961 John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an influential yet controversial director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). ... Martin Luther King, Jr. ... The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Logo. ...

"Do you mean to tell me that your position is more important than four hundred thousand black people's lives? Senator Humphrey, I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Now if you lose this job of Vice-President because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take [the nomination] this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I'm going to pray to Jesus for you."

Future negotiations were conducted without Hamer, and the compromise was modified such that the Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer. In the end, the MFDP rejected the compromise, but had changed the debate to the point that the Democratic Party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation from their states' delegations in 1968. Sunflower County is a county located in the state of Mississippi. ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ...

Later activism

Hamer continued to work in Mississippi for the Freedom Democrats and for local civil rights causes. She ran for Congress in 1964 and 1965, and was eventually seated as a member of Mississippi's legitimate delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1968, where she was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. Type Bicameralism Houses Senate House of Representatives United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D, since January 4, 2007 Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D, since January 4, 2007 Members 535 plus 4 Delegates and 1 Resident Commissioner Political groups (as of November 7, 2006 elections) Democratic Party Republican... Police and protesters at the Convention The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago by the United States Democratic Party, for the purposes of choosing the Democratic nominee for the 1968 U.S. Presidential Election. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000...

She continued to work on other projects, including grassroots-level Head Start programs, the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. Head Start is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that focuses on assisting children from low-income families. ... In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. ...

Hamer died of breast cancer on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59. Breast cancer is cancer of breast tissue. ... For the Lebanese political coalition, see March 14 Alliance. ... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ...

Quotes

"We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we’d gotten here. We didn't come all this way for no two seats, 'cause all of us is tired."

"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." (This quote was later employed as her epitaph.) An epitaph ( literally: on the gravestone in ancient Greek) is text honoring the deceased, most commonly inscribed on a tombstone or plaque. ...

"Nobody's free until everybody's free"

References

• Lee, Chana Kai (1999). For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-252-06936-6
• Marsh, Charles (1997). God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02134-1
• Mills, Kay (1993). This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: Dutton.
• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito. T.R.M. Howard M.D.: A Mississippi Doctor in Chicago Civil Rights, A.M.E. Church Review (July-September 2001), 50-59.
• Payne, Charles M. (1995). "I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle". Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN: 0-520-20706-8

External links

• Oral History
• National Women's Hall of Fame entry
• FemBio.org bio
• Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Fannie Lou Hamer
• Fannie Lou Hamer's Gravesite