Person · 1917–1977
Fannie Lou Hamer
A Mississippi sharecropper turned voting-rights organizer whose televised testimony shook the 1964 Democratic convention.
A grassroots leader of [[disenfranchisement|the fight for the vote]].
The youngest of twenty children, Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper until she tried to register to vote in 1962 and was evicted, jailed, and beaten for it. She became a fearless SNCC organizer and a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
Her 1964 convention testimony — "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired" — was so powerful that President Johnson called an impromptu press conference to pull cameras away from her. She spent her life organizing for the vote and against poverty.
On the timeline
- June 21, 1964Freedom Summer
Volunteers register Black voters in Mississippi; three are murdered by the Klan.
- June 1973Forced sterilization and the "Mississippi appendectomy"
Into the 1970s, Black women were sterilized without consent so routinely in the South that the practice was nicknamed the "Mississippi appendectomy." Fannie Lou Hamer was a victim; the Relf sisters' case finally exposed it.
Resources
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- documented by·ThreadMedical Racism
Hamer's forced "Mississippi appendectomy" exposed coerced sterilization of Black women.