Badass Women: Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was another legend of the Civil Rights Movement, helping to register thousands of people to vote and fighting against illegal segregation in Mississippi. Racist former-president Lyndon Johnson was said to have feared her, and she was an unstoppable force who was also unafraid, willing to put herself in danger if it meant more rights for others.

As with some of the other women I have written about, it would be impossible to talk about every aspect of her life (there’s books for that!) so this will be just a summary, albeit one of the most resilient you’ll read today, or even all week.

Born to sharecroppers in Mississippi, Hamer was the youngest of 20 children and from age 6 helped her parents to pick cotton. She learned to read and write through Bible study, and married at age 27. The start of her own activism began as the result of a horrid crime committed against her: while having surgery for a uterine tumor, a white doctor also completed a hysterectomy without her consent, leaving her unable to have children. She is credited for coining the phrase “Mississippi appendectomy” because according to her, as many as 6 out of 10 African American women who went to the hospital suffered forced sterilization. Although her and her husband eventually adopted two children, this prompted her to fight for the basic human rights that were being denied to African Americans, including the right to vote.

This started with her and 17 others going to register to vote at the county clerk’s office, but only she and one other person were even allowed to take the literacy test, which they both failed. She failed once more before eventually passing, and for those who don’t know, the literacy tests were notoriously hard and super racist—could you explain what de facto laws are without Googling it? Yep, me neither.

Like Septima Clark, Hamer attended Southern Christian Leadership Conferences (SCLC) and taught workshops there, and was also involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. On her way to one of the SCLC conferences, she and other co-activists were denied service at a roadside café and were arrested by police. She was severely beaten while in jail, and had kidney damage and a blood clot over her left eye for the rest of her life.

After this incident, she helped co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in an effort to have African American representation in the Democratic Party, and even ran for the U.S. Senate and the Mississippi State Senate, both times unsuccessfully. Her attempts to gain representation in the Democratic Party were met with resistance from, surprise, all the white men, including former-president Johnson, and it was not until years later that that the MFDP gained any seats.

She continued to be active in the fight to make land more accessible to African Americans, and to change the sharecropping system, which was just another way to keep African Americans destitute and in debt to the landowners. She also co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, and traveled around the country giving speeches. She died at the age of 59 of breast cancer, and on her tombstone one of her most famous quotes was inscribed: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired”.

Among the much-deserved recognition she received both during and after her life, there are honorary degrees from Columbia College Chicago and Howard University, an induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and numerous schools and programs named after her. Rest in Power.

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