Aisha Ellis

Happy Birthday to the late Great Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer. “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” Fannie Lou Hamer was a voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On June 9, 1963, Hamer was on her way back from Charleston, South Carolina with other activists from a literacy workshop. Stopping in Winona, Mississippi, the group was arrested on a false charge and jailed. Once in jail, Hamer and her colleagues were beaten savagely by the police, almost to the point of death. Released on June 12, she needed more than a month to recover. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election, in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. Later she became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant activist of civil rights. LEGACY: ✊🏿There is a Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, Mississippi. It was rededicated by the city on July 12, 2008. ✊🏿The Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Marker (part of the Memorial Garden) was unveiled on May 25, 2011. ✊🏿A statue of Fannie Lou Hamer was unveiled in October 2012 at the Memorial Garden. ✊🏿In 1970 Ruleville Central High School held a "Fannie Lou Hamer Day". In 1976 the City of Ruleville celebrated a "Fannie Lou Hamer Day". ✊🏿Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Washington DC-based African American female a cappella singing group, wrote and recorded a song called "Fannie Lou Hamer." ✊🏿Dark River, an opera about Hamer written by composer and pianist Mary D. Watkins, premiered in November 2009 in Oakland, California. ✊🏿95 South's "All of the Places We've Been" by Gil Scott-Heron with Brian Jackson was a standard at any Gil Scott-Heron show. The song was his tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer, as he stated in his DVD of a 2001 concert, New Morning: The Paris Concert. ✊🏿On Oct. 6, 2012 (the 95th anniversary of Mrs. Hamer's birth), an acclaimed new musical inspired by the life of Fannie Lou Hamer -- titled and written by Felicia Hunter -- had its world premiere in New York City to sold-out audiences. Hunter currently is seeking to take the work to Broadway. 🖋️if you love our content, please consider supporting our page on AfricanArchives.Support (follow the ko-fi page too for weekly posts roundup)