Fannie Lou Hamer
By: Danielle Gibson
Tags: History, BlackLivesMatter, Poetry, Racism, Civil Rights

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In 1917, Ella and James Lee Townsend welcomed their 20th child into the world in Montgomery County, Mississippi. They gave their youngest child the name Fannie Lou. Little Fannie Lou would grow up in the Mississippi Delta, where she would continually come up against threats, harassment, and assault all because of the color of her skin. While life didn’t hand Fannie Lou the easiest of hands, she would not be kept down. Living in a society that continually worked against her, it would have been easy to fold. However, Hamer chose to stand up against the system that denied her and fought for the rights of women and people of color across the nation.

In the 1950s, Hamer became interested in the efforts of the civil rights movement after attending the annual Regional Council of Negro Leadership conference. The conference, held in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, shared information about black voting rights and other issues that black communities in the region faced. After becoming actively involved in the movement, Hamer sought the right to vote. In 1962, she traveled with a group of activists to register to vote. However, the Jim Crow laws of the south allowed the courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to give literacy tests to those registering to vote. The purpose of these literacy tests was to suppress the black voice and vote throughout the south.

When Fannie Lou arrived at the register’s office in August 1962, she was asked to explain de facto laws in her literacy test. After Hamer couldn’t adequately explain the question she had been presented, she left the courthouse feeling defeated. On top of this, when Hamer’s boss caught wind of the fact that she had even tried to register to vote, he told her to withdraw her registration, saying, “we’re not ready for that in Mississippi.” Hamer told her boss, “I didn’t try to register for you, I tried to register for myself.” Hamer was immediately fired and kicked off of the plantation both she and her husband worked at as sharecroppers. While Hamer was forced to leave, her husband was required to stay and work the land until the end of harvest.

Despite these setbacks, Hamer never backed down. She was verbally abused, shot at, and beat by Mississippi Police Officers as she continued to fight for equality and the right to cast her vote. After taking the literacy test three times, Hamer was finally able to pass in January 1963. However, she soon hit another roadblock as she was required to pay a poll tax that she could not afford in order to cast her vote. Hamer’s continued efforts in the civil rights movement earned her an opportunity to speak at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer gave a moving speech where she gave the iconic line, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” In the midst of the civil rights movement, Fannie Lou’s fiery speech inspired a generation. After fighting tirelessly for the equality of both women and people of color, Hamer had every right to express how tired she was of having to fight for the right to simply exist as herself. Fannie Lou Hamer continued to fight for civil rights and social justice until her death in 1977. The fiery civil rights icon drew her last breath on March 14, 1977, at the age of just 59.