READER: Tori ~ Fannie Lou Hamer

I was born on October 6th, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. I was the 20th and last child to my sharecropper parents, being born into poverty I began picking cotton at the age of six. Upon turning twelve I left school in order to work to assist contributing to my family.

I married my husband in 1944 at the age of 27. We toiled the Mississippi owned by W.D Marlow together until 1962. I served as plantation timekeeper as I was the only worker with the ability to read and write. 

In 1961 I received a hysterectomy without my consent while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. This sparked the beginning of me utilizing my voice to demand to be heard and I later adopted two daughters.

I later became organizer of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and in 1962 led 17 volunteers to register to vote at the Indianola, Mississippi courthouse. 

In 1963 myself and several other black women were arrested after completing a voters registration program for sitting at a “whites-only” bus station restaurant, where I was brutally beaten in the jailhouse leaving me with a blood clot in my eye, kidney damage and leg damage. 

In 1964 I co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which challenged the local Democratic Party’s efforts to block black participation. I also helped organize Freedom Summer which brought hundreds of college students to help with African American voter registration in the segregated south. That same year, I announced my candidacy for Mississippi House of Representatives but was barred from the ballot. A year later I became the first Black woman to stand in the U.S Congress for protesting the Mississippi House election of 1964. 

In 1968 I expanded my interest in creating a “pig bank” to provide free pigs for Black farmers to breed, raise, and slaughter, and a year later launched the Freedom Farm Cooperative which purchased land for African Americans to own and farm collectively. 

In 1971 I assisted in founding the National Women’s Political Caucus. After years of my political and community ties, my health began to decline and I unfortunately passed in 1977 due to breast cancer.  

My name is Fannie Lou Hamer and my efforts and story paved the way for many African American women’s political voices to come.