Fannie Lou Hamer grew up as a sharecropper, earned the nickname “the First Lady of Civil Rights”, became the co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Party and the co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and she lived with a disability. Fannie had a gift for captivating audiences with her forceful personality. She dealt with violence daily because of her advocacy and yet she was fearless.
Mississippi 1963
Fannie could hear the white law enforcement officers planning to kill her group and dump their bodies in the river. She could hear the brutal beating of her fifteen-year-old friend June and knew she was next. Fannie almost couldn’t believe that human beings could be this brutal towards other humans. How could anyone be so heartless? Who would beat a child for no reason? Now she hears steps coming down the hall. They are coming for her.
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)
Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer was born on Oct. 6, 1917, in rural Montgomery County, Mississippi. Her family soon moved to Sunflower County to a plantation owned by W.D. Marlow. She was the youngest of 20 siblings. Her parents were sharecroppers and having so many children was considered a good investment because they could pick more cotton that way. Making a living as a sharecropper was brutal. The whole family worked from dawn to dusk, and often even in the dark, and they still didn’t make enough to keep their family going. The plantation owners were cheating sharecroppers by fixing scales and charging ridiculous prices in the company store. At times in the Townsend family, despite their constant work, the children ended up eating dirt just to fill their stomachs.
Fannie’s family tried to escape the sharecropping life by buying several mules. A white man angry at their success poisoned all the mules and it was back to sharecropping after that. Their non-stop work didn’t buy them a fancy life, they lived in a shack with no running water or electricity while the plantation owner’s dog had its own bathroom in the mansion. They also lived in a dangerous area of Mississippi where it was common for Black people to be lynched. Their own sheriff was the brother of one of Emmit Till’s murderers.
Fannie was tricked into picking cotton and a lifetime of debt when she was 6 years old. The plantation owner tricked her by telling her she could get candy if she picked some cotton. So she took the candy, but the owner charged her exorbitant prices for the candy and made her pick cotton to pay for it. At six years old she was already in debt to the plantation owner.
Other posts in this series:
Barbara Jordan breaking barriers
Virginia Hall WWII Spy
Wilma Mankiller Chief of the Cherokee
Fannie Lou Hamer and Disability
Fannie Lou Hamer lived with a disability that she thought was from a bout of polio when she was six years old. When she was an adult though, she found out that when she was a baby her brother (in charge of her while the rest of the family was in the fields) dropped her and broke her leg. Her brother was much too young to watch a baby, but the family had no other choice, they had to work to stay alive. They didn’t have any medical care either, so Fannie’s leg wasn’t ever set.
Fannie Lou Hamer and forced sterilization of the disabled and women of color
In 1961 Fannie went into the hospital for surgery on a small tumor. She found out later through gossip that she’d been given a hysterectomy without her permission. This was so commonly done to Black women in Mississippi that Fannie called it the “Mississippi Appendectomy.” Teaching hospitals were especially guilty of performing these surgeries (without consent) as practice for medical students.
Before 1960, there were approximately 70,000 forced sterilizations that occurred in the United States. A large percentage of these victims were either disabled people or poor women of color, and Fannie Lou Hamer was both. According to Hamer’s research, 60% of the Black women in Sunflower County, Mississippi, where she received the forced sterilization, were victims of the Mississippi appendectomy during childbirth.
Before 1960, there were approximately 70,000 forced sterilizations that occurred in the United States. A large percentage of these victims were either people with disabilities or poor women of color. Click To TweetFannie Lou Hamer’s Introduction to Civil Rights
In 1962 the Freedom Riders came to Mississippi hoping to encourage and support Black people in registering to vote. A woman that Fanny went to church with talked to them and immediately thought of Fannie. At first, Fannie wasn’t interested, but she ended up going to the meeting featuring Jame Forman who worked with MLK. She was convinced to try to register to vote. By even considering the option she was challenging the white community and Jim Crow laws.
On August 21st, Fannie and seventeen others went to Indianola to register to vote. They all traveled together in a rented bus, knowing that they would encounter trouble and resistance. Fannie was the first person in the group to enter the courthouse and was met with immediate hostility. She was asked where she worked (so the white boss could punish her) and given a literacy test. She was given the 16th section of the Mississippi constitution on dealing with facto laws. Fannie said afterwords
Dealing with facto laws and I knowed as much about facto law as a horse knows about Christmas Day¹
Needless to say, she didn’t pass.
Harassment for trying to register to vote
The group failed in their bid to register, and as they were heading home they were pulled over and fined for being in a bus that was “too yellow.” Everyone was terrified, but Fannie started singing “This little light of mine” which lightened things up. When Fannie got home the plantation owner she’d worked for for 18 years told her she needed to stop trying to register. Fanny refused and lost her job because of it. She said:
I didn’t go down there to register for Mr. Marlow. I went down to register for myself¹
That night Fannie left the plantation for her safety and went to stay with a friend. In retaliation for the bus trip, white locals made sure that Black city workers were fired, two Black businesses were shut down, and the Black baptist church was denied free water and tax exemption (like the white churches). It didn’t stop Fannie. Fannie and the other civil rights workers were committed to non-violence, but Southern whites were determined to punish any Black person they could find. They used bottles, bricks, blocks, fire, and bombs to attack random Black people.
After losing her job Fannie started traveling with civil rights workers to give speeches convincing people to vote. She scolded people for not taking action and then quoted the bible and made fun of cowardly men. Fannie even mimicked MLK and shamed people who suffered less than her. She told people not to hate whites, but to help them out of office.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s beating and the resulting disability
On the way back from voter registration training Fannie and her group sat down at whites-only lunch counters to protest. They endured harassment, but they were served. Then they hit their last stop, Winona, Mississippi things became especially ugly.
Their bus arrived at 11:15 on June 9, 1963. The police chief told them to get out of the cafe, threatened them with billy clubs, and then arrested them. Fannie came out of the bus to see what was happening and they arrested her too. She argued with the police chief and he told her to shut up or they’d die. No one knew what the charges were.
The prisoners were all brutally beaten with a blackjack. They forced another Black inmate to beat Fannie telling him
I want you to make that bitch wish she was dead.¹
After the beating Fannie’s head hurt, her blood pressure was high, and her body was bruised and swelling. There was no medical care offered. She developed blood clots affecting her sight, and kidney problems. She spent months in physical therapy trying to recover. Fannie would suffer from the consequences of that beating for the rest of her life.
The prisoners were not released until June 12th. There was a trial against the local officials, but they all got off. For Fannie and other civil rights workers Winona showed how the federal government could only do so much when local officials were corrupted.
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the founders of the MFDP. The idea was the give Black people a voice, challenge Mississippi politics, and remove the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Party convention (at the time, there was effectively no Republican party in Mississippi). It was a symbol of the disenfranchisement of Black people in Mississippi. Fannie was elected a representative in the party. Her driving line was
We are sick and tired of being sick and tired!¹
Fannie and the MFDP struggled with all sorts of barriers being thrown in their way to be at the Democratic convention. The MFDP insisted that they should be seated as the official delegation, but they made President Lyndon Johnson nervous. During Fannie’s speech to the credentials committee, Johnson called an emergency press conference about nothing so people wouldn’t hear her speech. It backfired when the national news rebroadcast it that night. This speech is what cemented Fannie’s legacy.
The MFDP wasn’t successful in obtaining those seats in 1964, but their efforts affected many who previously hadn’t understood the situation in Mississippi. They also put pressure on the democratic party to change.
The life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie fought for Civil Rights for the rest of her life. Despite bad health, she ran for office and turned her attention to anti-poverty programs like head start and a farm cooperative to provide food for Black families. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1976 and died March 14, 1977, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.
Her funeral was held in a Ruleville church where hundreds came to say goodbye to the gifted orator and Civil Rights Icon. Fannie is buried in the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville. Her tombstone says “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Fannie lived such a full life I can’t even begin to fit it in one blog post. She was one of the most important voices in the fight for civil rights. and I highly recommend learning more about her. She seems to have faded into history over time, so I have to thank the History Chicks podcast for bringing her to my attention.
Suggested Media
The history chicks podcast on Fannie Lou Hamer
This is a great book for kids and was available at my library
This is a biography that’s a pretty easy read
PBS (free) Documentary “Freedom Riders” is great to get some perspective on what Fannie and other Civil Rights workers dealt with at the time though it’s mostly about Alabama and not Mississippi.
Sources
- Mills, K. (2007). This little light of mine: The life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
2. Bracey, E. N. (2011). Fannie Lou Hamer: The life of a civil rights icon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
3. WEATHERFORD, C. B. (2018). VOICE OF FREEDOM: Fannie Lou Hamer. CANDLEWICK Press.