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Fannie Lou Hamer was born
October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. Of twenty children born to
Jim and Louella Townsent, Fannie Lou was the youngest. In 1962, after attending
a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced SNICK) meeting,
Mrs. Hamer decided to register to vote and became active in the Civil Rights
Movement at the age of 45. When the group of registrants she was with arrived
at the courthouse, police and other whites began milling around the bus and
people were afraid to get off.
Suddenly, a little stocky woman stood up,
walked up to the courthouse and went to the Circuit Clerk's office. That was
Fannie Lou Hamer. |
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1917-1977 |
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In response to the degredation she
endured under slavery and sharecropping, Hamer later declared, in her now
famous words:
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"I am sick and tired
of being sick and tired!" |
Mrs. Hamer led the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party (MFDP) Challenge in 1964 at the National Democratic Party
Convention during which 68 delegates elected under the MFDP banner in
Mississippi challenged the legality of the all-white Mississippi delegation and
asked to tbe seated. She also testified eloquently about the atrocities visited
upon Blacks in Mississippi for attempting to vote. The freedom struggle took
its toll on Mrs. Hamer's health. She underwent a mastectomy and then
resumed her activites. On March 14, 1977, Fannie Lou Hamer died in the Mound
Bayou Community Hospital and was returned to the Delta soil where she had
toiled for so long. She is buried in an open field, alongside her husband Perry
"Pap" Hamer (now) on land owned by the Freedom Farm which she so cherished. The
Ruleville, Mississippi post office and the street on which Mrs. Hamer resided
are both named in her honor. The lowly, sharecropping woman
named Fannie Lou Hamer is Ruleville's most famous citizen. |
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 Return to Billie Jean
Young article |
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