Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6, 1917–March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader. 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 the American Civil Rights Movement.

Beginnings of activism

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, Mrs. 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 could do was kill me, and it seemed they'd been trying to do that a little at a time since I could remember."

Related Topics:
August 23 - 1962 - James Bevel - Martin Luther King, Jr. - Register to vote - Racism - Lynching

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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.

Related Topics:
August 31 - Indianola, Mississippi - Christian - Hymn - Ku Klux Klan

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Mrs. 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.

Related Topics:
Bob Moses - Charles McLaurin

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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. Released on June 12, she was more than a month in recovery. 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.

Related Topics:
June 9 - 1963 - Charleston, South Carolina - Winona, Mississippi - June 12 - Election - 1964

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