“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” These were the words spoken by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hammer for her picture of the plight of Black people, in their fight for civil rights. Fannie Lou Hammer was born October 6, 1917 in Ruleville, Mississippi, and is best known for her work in the struggle for voting rights, which she dedicated her life. Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of twenty children. After reaching the sixth grade at the age of 12, she dropped out of school to work on the cotton plantations of the Delta. By the age of 13 she was picking as much as 400 lbs of cotton in a day and receiving $1.00 for her work..
She worked on the D. Marlowe plantation. The sharecroppers, could not leave on his or her free will. She tried her best to get away from the "slave-like" conditions of living on a plantation. In 1942 she married Perry (“Pap”) Hamer, a tractor driver, and they remained there for the next 18 years. In 1961, she underwent surgery to remove a small cyst in her stomach. When she awoke, she had discovered that she'd also been given a hysterectomy without her consent. This type of forced sterilization was so common at the time, that it became referred to as a "Mississippi appendectomy", a term coined by Hamer herself.
Her civil rights activism began in August 1962, when she answered a call by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for volunteers to challenge voter registration procedures that excluded Black Americans. SNCC was letting the people know that they could vote out people that they didn't want in office. This Committee was dedicated to ensuring Black Americans in the Jim Crow South knew of their right to vote. She joined SNCC and vowed to register and exercise her right to vote. Her ability to speak plainly and persuasively impacted most everyone who encountered her.
On August 31st 1962, she and 17 other activists traveled to Indianola to register to vote. White supremacy was prevalent, so they knew their journey to the voter registration rolls would not be easy. People on the bus were afraid. White men in trucks were driving by waving guns and yelling at them. Fannie Lou Hamer started to sing. It was the power of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer’s singing that calmed everyone down and eased their fear. At the time, citizens were forced to pass literacy tests in order to vote, a racist effort to disenfranchise Black people. Once at the courthouse, only 2 were allowed to register at a time. Although she did not pass the literacy test her first time registering, she eventually passed and paid the poll tax so she could vote.
Ms. Hammer was informed that she was now a registered voter in Mississippi. But when she attempted to vote that fall, she discovered her registration did not allow her to vote, as her county also required voters to have two poll tax receipts. This "poll" tax was put in place to ensure that the poorest people, who were often pople of colre, didn't get a voice in government. Later that year, the United States passed the 24th amendment, which outlawed poll taxes for federal elections. After her attempt to register to vote, the plantation owner where Hamer worked and lived demanded she retract her application or face eviction.
Fannie Lou Hamer refused and was immediately kicked off his land, that she and her husband worked on for decades. That only redoubled her dedication to fighting for civil rights. On June 9th 1963, Hamer 9 other activists were returning from a voter registration civic education session. They had tried to integrate lunch counters at the various bus stations on their way home. In Winona, MS police arrested the activists. While in incarceration, Hamer suffered severe and prolonged beatings from the police that resulted in lifelong damage to her kidneys, eyes and legs. Police also force other Blacks inmates to beat her.
In 1964, Mrs. Hamer helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). She attended the 1964 Democratic National Convention with her group, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The MFDP advocated that democratic leaders in Mississippi were illegally elected since Black Americans were denied the right to vote in the state. On August 22nd, 1964, Hamer testified before the credential committee. She started by stating her full name and home address defiantly signaling her fearlessness to every White supremacist. Hamer spoke about her personal experiences with trying to register to vote and her time and abuse in jail after being arrested for registering Black voters. Her powerful speech was broadcast on national television.
“If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America,” Hamer told the credentials committee. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to asleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?” President Lyndon B. Johnson hastily called a news conference during Hamer’s testimony to try to divert attention from divisions that could alienate White voters in the South. It backfired, bringing more media attention to Hamer's testimony than it otherwise might have gotten. TV cameras cut away, but networks showed her speech later.
At the insistence of President Johnson, however, the committee refused to seat the MFDP delegation, offering only two at-large seats, provided that neither went to Hamer. She and the MFDP refused, with Hamer saying, "We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we'd gotten here. We didn't come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired." Afterward, all the White members from the Mississippi delegation walked out. Although Lyndon Johnson refused to seat the MFDP, the Democrats agreed that in the future no delegation would be seated from a state where anyone was illegally denied the right to vote.
Although she lost her bid, her run put Mississippi and its systemic racism into the spotlight. She quickly became a leader in the civil rights movement, and her work in the struggle for voting rights was instrumental in getting the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed. That same year, Hamer announced her candidacy for the Mississippi House of Representatives in a challenge to White segregationist James Whitten. When the Democratic Party refused to allow her on the official ballot, an estimated 60,000 Black voters wrote in her name on “Freedom Ballots.”
In one moment of triumph, she finally was recognized as an official delegate from Mississippi at the National Democratic Party Convention in 1968. Deeply committed to improving life for poor minorities in her state, Hamer, working with the National Council of Negro Women and others, helped organize food cooperatives and other services. She continued political activities as well, helping to convene the National Women’s Political Caucus in the 1970s. Hamer continued to work for political and civil rights causes, including the Freedom Democrats, Head Start programs, the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign.
Ms. Hammer has received many awards both in her lifetime and posthumously. She received a Doctor of Law from Shaw University, and honorary degrees from Columbia College Chicago in 1970 and Howard University in 1972. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. Hamer also received the Paul Robeson Award from Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She was presented with the Mary Church Terrell Award from Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and the National Sojourner Truth Meritorious Service Award. Fannie Lou Hamer was awarded the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.