It was the power of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer’s singing that first brought her to the attention of SNCC.
Have you heard of Fannie Lou Hamer? It's probably been within the last five years that I've heard her name. I bought a shirt from Target with a list of Black women's names on it and hers was there. I knew about Sojourner Truth, Maya Angelou, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, but didn't know anything about Fannie Lou Hamer. I decided to research her and boy did I learn some things. She was a resilient Black woman.
Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6, 1917—March 14, 1977) was a civil rights activist. She fought to expand voting rights for African Americans. Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, during a time of segregation. African Americans in the…
Louis Draper resisted labels. He knew that they could confine, like boxes, but much worse, they might be like prison cells: impossible to escape.
Dr. Monica M. White shares an excerpt from her new book, Freedom Farmers, with the work of Fannie Lou Hamer leading the charge as an example of social justice through agriculture.
You may now purchase your tickets to see the much anticipated one-woman performance of “The Fannie Lou Hamer Story!” The attached flyer has been updated with a QR Code which can be used to directly access the WBTT site. Please distribute it widely and often to your organization’s members, your family, friends and neighbors. You
Thank God for her unconquerable soul! Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer was born October 6, 1917 in the Mississippi Delta, the last of 20 children born to sharecroppers Lou Ella and James Townsend, the National Women’s History Museum reports. Hamer began picking cotton at age 6 and left school to help her family at age 12. […]
These Juneteenth quotes and sayings from Black leaders and figures discuss the significance of Juneteenth as well as how far America has gone and how far we still have to go in the ongoing struggle for equality.
Posted October 6, 2018 Sometimes I go onto college campuses, or door-to-door, or other public places, and I encourage people to register to vote and to actually EXERCISE the right to vote. In other words, it's frustrating when people who can, won't or don't. So many people have worked so hard to earn the right to vote, and for most of us it's the easiest and most fundamental power we have to shape our government and future. Today's famous birthday, Fannie Lou Hamer, was supposed to have the right to vote where she lived, in Mississippi. Black men had been granted the right to vote waaaaaay back in 1850, and women had been granted the right to vote in 1920, just a few years after Hamer was born (on this date in 1917). But you may have heard that Jim Crow laws in the South did a ton to maintain racial segregation and also to make it really hard for black people to actually vote. How hard? Hamer was threatened and harassed, extorted and assaulted and even shot at when she tried to register to vote or to actually cast a vote! And it wasn't some just some crazed fanatics abusing Hamer when she was trying to exercise her right to vote. It was police officers and supposedly upright citizens. Cops and citizens who were thoroughly racist, of course. White supremacists. But white supremacists who held all the power in Mississippi. Hamer got involved with civil rights activism. She ended up helping lots of African-American people register to vote and to improve their lives. She ran for the Mississippi State Senate and also to be the Mississippi Senator at the national level - and she lost those races, but the effort of trying to run must have made a very visible difference to other black people. She was a co-founder of an organization to recruit and train women of all races who want to run for elected office. Hamer and other activists won a huge victory when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Those laws should have ended segregation in the South and removed all the barriers to voting erected in the South. But, as you probably already know, just because there's a law, that doesn't mean people follow the law. So of course racial problems remained. Hamer was one of the leaders who sued to achieve integration and to make white people follow the law. It's always interesting to read about the background of the strong black women I focus on. In Hamer's case, she was the youngest of 20 children of sharecroppers, she started picking cotton at age 6, and she had polio that left her with a disfigured leg. She learned to read and was able to attend a one-room school located on the cotton plantation, between picking seasons, but she had to quit school at age 12 to take care of her parents. It all sounds REALLY difficult, but Fannie Lou Hamer didn't let all the bad stuff stop her. She pushed back, pushed forward, and pushed society - and we should all be grateful for her push! Also on this date: German-American Day Physician Assistant Day Remembrance Day in Turkmenistan Mad Hatter Day Inventor George Westinghouse's birthday Birthday of tennis player Helen Wills Ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl's birthday World Card Making Day (First Saturday of October) Anniversary of the first and only human-powered circumnavigation Plan ahead: Check out my Pinterest boards for: October holidays October birthdays Historical anniversaries in October And here are my Pinterest boards for: November holidays November birthdays Historical anniversaries in November
This is an original block print of Christian civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, hand pulled on an antique proof press from the carved block. Image size is 6”x4” and it comes matted in black, 10”x8”. OPTIONS: - b/w (light tan paper) $30 - color hand painted watercolor $65 - painted with printed mat in worn wood black frame $225* *framed piece only available in the USA ABOUT: FANNIE LOU HAMER Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? ~ Isaiah 58:6 You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap. ~ Fannie Lou Hamer Fannie Lou Hamer’s spiritual life consisted of prayer, praise, and action. Although known primarily as a civil rights activist, she also sang, recording an album of spirituals entitled Songs My Mother Taught Me. The album included early hymns, as well as traditional pieces such as I’m Going Down to the River of Jordan, This Little Light of Mine, and Pick A Bale of Cotton. Many of the songs included short introductions to make them more personable and to offer greater insight of what they meant to her. A Mississippi sharecropper’s daughter who was picking cotton by the age of six, Fannie knew hard times. During attempts to simply vote, a law of the land she was entitled to, Fannie was denied, harassed, beaten, humiliated, and shot at. Eventually she got “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” This set her course into a life of activism. One summer evening on a bus ride home from Indianola after another failed attempt to vote, the bus was pulled over by a police officer who took the driver into custody. The vehicle was apparently “too yellow” and resembled a school bus. Seventeen of the African Americans wanting to vote now awaited their plight on a Mississippi backroad as the sun went down. Would they be arrested, beaten, lynched? There was a palpable atmosphere of fear in the air. But suddenly from the back of the bus, Fannie Lou’s praise cut through the silence. The same spirituals that gave courage to her mother, a former slave, now brought much needed comfort, courage, and peace to those in her presence. Fannie Lou Hamer’s voice rang out— Have a little talk with Jesus Tell him all about our troubles, Hear our feeble cry, Answer by and by, Feel the little prayer wheel turning, Feel a fire a burning, Just a little talk with Jesus makes it right. God our strength; Grant us the courage to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Amen
Kamilah Aisha Moon was born on September 5, 1973, in Nashville. She received a BA from Paine College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Moon authored the poetry collections Starshine & Clay (Four Way Books, 2017) and She Has a Name (Four Way Books, 2013), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award from the Publishing Triangle. D. A. Powell said of her work, “Grief and sorrow cannot prevail where there exists such sympathetic and empathetic forces as those summoned in the poems of Kamilah Aisha Moon.” Moon’s other honors included a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center, MacDowell, the Prague Summer Writing Institute, and the Vermont Studio Center. She worked as a poet in the schools through Community-Word Project and the DreamYard Project, and taught poetry at Rikers Island and Medgar Evers College-CUNY in New York City. She then taught at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where she lived until her passing on September 24, 2021.
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was a civil rights activist whose passionate depiction of her own suffering in a racist society helped focus attention on the plight of African Americans throughout the South. In 1964, working with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Hamer helped organize the 1964 Freedom Summer African American voter registration drive in […]
We Are Not Free Big Magnet by Lisa Congdon. 2.25" round Super Strong Flat Magnet Back Artwork based on an original quote by the phenomenal civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free"