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“And we can no longer ignore the fact that we can’t sit down and wait for things to change. Because as long as they can keep their feet on our neck, they will always do it. But it’s time for us to stand up and be women and men.” –Fannie Lou Hamer
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By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira
The legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer is one of the most inspiring to come out of the 1960s-70s Civil Rights movement. She was an outspoken activist that never yield to white supremacist terror and fought vigorously for the human rights of Black people.
Born in Montgomery County, Mississippi on October 6, 1917, during the height of Jim Crow laws and lynchings, Fannie Lou Hamer knew first-hand the viciousness of Black oppression. She was the youngest of 20 children in an extremely poor sharecropping family.
At just 6 years old, Fannie Lou began working in the field picking cotton. She was compelled to drop out of school at 12 years old to work full-time in the cotton fields in order to help support her family survive. However, because Fannie Lou loved reading the Bible and other books, she was fully literate by the time adulthood arrived.
One of the most outrageous acts committed against Hamer was in 1961 at a hospital in Mississippi. She went to undergo a routine surgery for the removal of a uterine tumor. Without her knowledge or consent, a white doctor also performed a hysterectomy.
Years later, Hamer discovered that what was done to her without permission was part of a broader and secret eugenics campaign to reduce the Black population. This heinous genocidal program involved medical institutions as well as agencies of the U.S. government. Indigenous, Chicana/Mexican and Puerto Rican women were also secretly targeted for sterilization. Similarly, in Puerto Rico, one/third of the child-baring female population was sterilized between the 1930s to the 1980s.
Despite many ordeals that affected her personally, Hamer’s resilience and leadership was strengthened. In 1963, this heroine earned the title Field Secretary for the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for its voter registration drives. This was an exemplary entity initially founded and led by another Civil Rights icon, Ella Baker.
Hamer’s outspokenness was admired by many Civil Rights leaders, including, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr with whom she collaborated. Although Hamer differed with the more radical politics and tactics of the Black Panther Party, they maintained a mutual respect for one another based on their common interest in Black emancipation. In fact, Hamer was quite vocal condemning the media’s slanders and the government’s COINTELPRO attacks on individual Panther leaders and their offices throughout the country.
The Ku Klux Klan and other racists among the white populace of the deep South did not take well knowing that Black people were emboldened and politically active. The consequential backlash that African Americans encountered for organizing themselves to demand their rights was violence.
In many municipalities throughout the South police and KKK activities were synonymous. For anyone, especially African Americans, who challenged existing racist laws designed to deny Black people the right to vote meant risking your life. Fannie Lou Hamer proved to be a courageous woman; she dismissed the potential physical danger to herself and proceeded in her quest for racial equality.
On June 9, 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer was severely beaten by police while in custody. She was traveling on a bus with co-activists of Freedom Summer, returning home from a voter registration workshop. When they arrived at a rest stop to get a meal at a diner the group was refused service. The police were then called and immediately all the Black activists were brutally beaten.
Once in the jailhouse, Fannie Lou had her clothing ripped off. As she was viciously held down on the floor naked the police struck her with a baton repeatedly. The cops sexually abused and tortured her. The horror she helplessly experienced on that day is reminiscent of what enslaved Black women suffered by the hands of overseers and slaveowners.
The beating caused permanent kidney damage, a medical condition that lasted until her death on March 14, 1977. Despite her poor health and having been emotionally traumatized, Hamer continued her activist work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Fannie Lou Hamer traveled throughout the United States to enlighten people of the noble endeavor. She was invited to speak at universities, churches, political gatherings and rallies. Her influence was indisputably powerful as she promoted the general vision of the Civil Rights movement.
On December 20, 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer visited the Williams Institutional Church in the Mecca of Black politics and culture, Harlem, New York City, where she met and appeared alongside of Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Hamer was running for office in Mississippi, in a campaign to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representative. It was at the gathering in Harlem when she presented her most famous speech titled, “Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired.”
Hamer was well received by a mostly Black audience who sympathized and admired her defiance and ability to survive many life-threatening ordeals. Her speech included a chronology of racist violence she personally experienced as well as shedding light on the suffering Black people have endured throughout the country.
Among the many challenges Fannie Lou Hamer had to confront was the shameful patronizing racism of the overwhelmingly white Democratic Party, or “Dixiecrats,” as Malcolm X frequently described them. Their not-so-hidden social arrogance was transparent to most Black people, especially Fannie Lou Hamer who sensed their insidious prejudices towards her for speaking with a strong rural Southern Black accent and having a sharecropper family background.
White Democratic Party officials postered about “favoring” Black freedom, but only to the extent of securing for themselves the Black vote. It would have been naive to expect anything else. The customs, habits and traditions of the Democratic Party and its insidious behavior towards African Americans is rooted in the history of chattel slavery in the United States. The Democratic Party was once the political party of slave owners.
Being aware of the history and insulting behavior by white privileged officials, compelled Black activists affiliated with the Democratic Party to create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964, of which Fannie Lou Hamer was a co-founder. The Civil Rights activists had hoped to push for a better position within the Democratic Party while preserving an independent existence beneficial to the political struggles of Black people.
Hamer continued to push forward by creating the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. 640 acres were purchased to provide employment for many Black residents. They collectively cultivated and farmed the land. Hamer was also a co-founder National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), an entity that included Black and other women of color. The NWPC played a pivotal role during the rise of the Feminist movement. It made efforts to combine and highlight the relevance of the anti-racist struggle to the demands of women’s emancipation.
Fannie Lou Hamer was inspiring and an indisputably unique representation of an oppressed people. But she was also the product of centuries-long militant traditions which made possible the survival of Black people from the most challenging and unimaginable circumstances throughout their history.
Despite living with chronic pain from injuries sustained during the 1963 savage beating by police, the spirited energy to fight for the freedom of her people never deterred. The selflessness and humanity that Fannie Lou Hamer passionately possessed throughout her life, once it is emulated by millions of people it shall guarantee a victorious fight to end racist oppression and usher in a new society.
LONG LIVE THE LEGACY OF FANNIE LOU HAMER!
carlitoboricua 