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Fannie Lou HamerImage Courtesy of Progressive.org

NAME: Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer 

LIFETIME: October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977 

WHAT SHE IS KNOWN FOR: Hamer was a key organizer of the Civil Rights movement’s mass voter registration campaign, known as the 1963 Freedom Summer, as well as the co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. 

WHY WE LOVE HER: Born to Mississippi sharecroppers, Hamer spent much of her life picking cotton until 1961, when she received a hysterectomy without her consent during a surgery to remove a uterine tumor. White doctors across the South frequently performed these forced sterilization procedures without Black patients’ consent as part of a widespread effort to reduce the Black population. This practice was so common that it was referred to as a “Mississippi appendectomy.” That same summer, Hamer attended a meeting held by prominent Civil Rights organizations and became involved in the fight for Black voting rights

Hamer became an organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and helped coordinate group efforts to register Black voters, which resulted in Hamer and her husband getting fired from their plantation jobs. Afterward, she dove headfirst into the Civil Rights Movement, protesting segregation in Mississippi and aiding in organizing the Freedom Summer, in which Black and White activists and college students traveled across the segregated South to register Black voters. 

Hamer’s most well-known activism took place at the 1964 Democratic National Convention (DNC), where she spoke on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Hamer co-founded this group along with fellow activists Ella Baker and Bob Moses to demand the racial integration of DNC delegations and Black participation within the Democratic party. Though President Lyndon B. Johnson held a televised press conference to prevent her speech from being aired live, Hamer’s words were eventually heard nationwide when broadcasters aired her speech on the news that evening. As a result, the MFDP was recognized as an official Mississippi delegation at the 1968 DNC, making Hamer a member of Mississippi’s first integrated Democratic delegation. In 1971, Hamer founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, a grassroots, multiparty organization that is still active today in providing funds and resources to elect female candidates to office at all levels of government.

After years of traveling as a speaker and activist, Hamer’s failing health took its toll and she passed away from breast cancer in 1977.

FUN FACT: After enduring forced sterilization and losing the ability to have children of her own, Hamer and her husband adopted two children. 

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