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.

Early life

She was born Fannie Lou Townsend in Ruleville, Mississippi, the youngest of twenty children in an impoverished household. Her parents, in common with most African-Americans in the Mississippi Delta, were sharecroppers on a cotton plantation. They attempted to establish a farm of their own at one point, but an unknown person poisoned the feed for their animals, forcing them to return to the plantation.

Related Topics:
Ruleville, Mississippi - African-American - Mississippi Delta - Sharecroppers - Cotton

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Because young 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".

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