Fannie Lou Hamer
6 October 1917 – 14 March 1977
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader who became a powerful voice for the disenfranchised. A former sharecropper from Mississippi, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and gave a nationally televised testimony at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She dedicated her life to voter registration and the fight against racial and economic injustice.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Fannie Lou Hamer.
- A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) Overlapped 60 years →
- Alan Paton (1903–1988) Overlapped 60 years →
- Aldo Moro (1916–1978) Overlapped 60 years →
- Alice Paul (1885–1977) Overlapped 60 years →
- Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) Overlapped 60 years →
- Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002) Overlapped 60 years →
Life events
Born Fannie Lou Townsend, the youngest of twenty children in a sharecropping family.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgMarried Perry "Pap" Hamer and worked on a plantation in Sunflower County.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTraveled with activists to register to vote and was subsequently evicted from the plantation.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWorked as an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSeverely beaten in a Winona, Mississippi jail after a voter registration workshop.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHelped establish the MFDP to challenge the all-white state delegation.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDelivered nationally televised testimony about the violence facing Black voters in Mississippi.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgEstablished a cooperative to provide land and economic self-sufficiency for poor families.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDied of complications from breast cancer and hypertension.
Source: en.wikipedia.org