Black History Month - A Tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer: A remarkable leader!

Fannie Lou Hamer 

As a student at the College of St. Catherine (now St. Catherine University) I chose as my Global Search for Justice class a course taught by Sharon Doherty that took us down the road of the Civil Rights Movement.  This class opened wider the door on the all too silent voices of the women who were powerful leaders throughout the struggle to attain civil rights for people who are African American and who faced horrific persecution and were killed for their advocacy.

Fannie Lou Hamer is the woman who got into my soul and lives powerfully there as an example of the sacrifice women make over and over and over again - and how unsupported too many are once the fight is over!

At the height of the Civil Rights Movement Fannie Lou powerfully stated, "Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed.  But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom.  I'm not backing off."  The youngest of 20 children, she was born to sharecroppers and joined her parents and siblings in the cotton fields at age six.  Her formal education ended at age 12 but she continued to learn through Bible Study, and by reading newspapers food scraps were wrapped (by the plantation owners) before she threw dutifully tossed them into the garbage.

MS Hamer was a powerful, potent, passionate presence in the Civil Rights Movement.  She was able to take her love for Gospel Hymns and - in the heat of the moment - keep the melody and insert the language of the Civil Rights Movement to unite a crowd of a few to thousands.  Her biography states that "She was a captivating preacher and singer, inspiring others with her moral and physical courage."

I work in the Justice Office for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and Consociates.  Last spring we took a trip to Alabama to attend the 40th Anniversary of the Southern Poverty Law Center and tour Civil Rights Movement Memorials and Museums.  In each I looked for the book, "This Little Light of Mine: Life of Fannie Lou Hamer" which was one of the course texts we used at St. Catherine.  It was nowhere to be found!  So I began looking in books to find references of her countless contributions, the account of the beating by white jailers that nearly killed her and rendered her disabled for life!  Herstory was invisible most, slight in many. I was incredulous.

We spent a morning in Selma, Alabama, where we saw that the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee House (SNCC). A historical marker noting its importance stands proudly in front of the house, though it is crumbling inside and out.  Next we stopped at a new Selma Civil Rights Museum where the guide suggested that we should not miss the Lowndes County Interpretive Center located half-way to Montgomery.

We entered and placed prominently on the counter was the recently released "Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC."  At long last, Fannie Lou Hamer is a powerful presence in the stories of those women who worked alongside of her in SNCC!  I bought it immediately - and upon returning to Minnesota shared it with two professors at the University of St. Catherine.  They still have it and I have yet to read it.  Time to give them a call.

Fannie Lou Hamer contributed so much, how can history so easily dismiss her?
Just a few of her many contributions:
~~Registered herself to vote then worked tirelessly to register voters.  Result - she lost her job, received death threats, was jailed, severely beaten and permanently disabled
~~Helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964) because blacks were not allowed to in the all-white regular party delegation
~~When 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.
~~Worked towards achieving financial independence for blacks.
~~1969 she helped to start Freedom Farms Corporation, which lent land to blacks until they had enough money to buy land
~~Worked with the National Council of Negro Women
~~Organized food co-operatives
~~Helped convene the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1970.
~~1970 lawsuit, Hamer v. Sunflower County, demanded school desegregation
~~Helped set up Freedom Schools for black children
~~Helped found the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971, speaking for inclusion of racial issues in the feminist agenda.
~~In 1972 the Mississippi House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring her national and state activism, passing 116 to 0.
~~Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (1993)

Her biography states, "Though Hamer wanted children, a white doctor had sterilized her without     permission, so she adopted daughters instead.  In her last years, she received many honors and awards. Engraved on her headstone in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi, are her famous words: "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

History is dependent on who "has voice."  Just as Fannie Lou Hamer is missing from much the  Civil Rights Movement history or is reduced to a few lines, portraying an incomplete reality, memory is also fickle.  I seem to remember that she died pretty much alone, forgotten and penny less.  This morning I cannot check that fact because my copy of "This Little Light of Mine" is on the BLACK HISTORY MONTH display at work right next to a book about Martin Luther King, Jr.

What I can substantiate is that there is now a Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial, Ruleville, Mississippi.  I'd like to spend some time there some day!

So, such as it is, 45 years later. THANK YOU FANNIE LOU HAMER.  When I think of BLACK HISTORY MONTH, I think of you and I am a much better person for knowing that your life was well spent in reaching for "justice for all." 

In memory of Fannie Lou Hamer (1971-1977)