Avenger of the Week | Fannie Lou Hamer, Voting and Women's Rights Activist and Civil Rights Leader

Almost exactly 56 years ago, Fannie Lou Hamer lead 68 members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to the Democratic Presidential Convention in Atlantic City seeking recognition for the movement against racial discrimination, and particularly black voter suppression. Hamer appeared on nationwide television to make their case. The Democratic Party offered the Freedom Party two delegates, which they rejected and left the convention. Nevertheless, the Freedom Democratic Party gained national attention that led to many of their reforms in the next few years.

This was just one of the achievements of Hamer, one of 20 children of a Mississippi sharecropper who picked cotton from age 6 and had to leave school to work on the farm when she was 12. In her 40s, she became interested in civil rights, and she learned for the first time in 1961 that voting was a Constitutional right.

Determined to exercise that right, she tried to register in August 1962, but was told she had to pass a test, one of the common ruses used against Blacks. She failed the test, and when her boss heard what she had tried to do he fired her. After she received threats from the Klu Klux Klan, she had to leave home for a while, but she made another failed attempt to register in September. In January 1963, on her third try, she passed and registered to vote.

Hamer became vice president of the Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Party that rocked the national convention, helped organize SNCC’s Freedom Summer, founded the Women’s Political Caucus, and ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate from Mississippi. She also raised money and bought 640 acres of land in Ruleville, Mississippi to provide food and employment to poverty-stricken residents.

Hamer died at 59 of breast cancer in 1977. She has been honored posthumously by many organizations, including the Women’s Hall of Fame and Howard University, which awarded her an honorary degree. An act of Congress put her name on the U.S. Post Office in Ruleville, and a high school in the Bronx is named Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, reflecting her historic legacy as a voting and women's rights activist, community organizer, and a leader in the civil rights movement.

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Fannie Lou Hamer, a voting and women's rights activist, organizer, and civil rights leader, is @GenderAvenger’s #AvengerOfTheWeek. "Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over." #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-fannie-lou-hamer