Fannie Lou Hamer walked with a limp and still had a blood clot behind her eye from being severely beaten by police in a Mississippi jail. She was the youngest of 20 children born to sharecroppers in Mississippi, where she had spent much of her life picking cotton until she was fired for trying to register to vote. August 1962 she attended a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting and volunteered to go to the courthouse the next day to try to register to vote. The SNCC meeting at the church changed Hamer’s life. As a child in Ruleville, Miss., Hamer often went hungry and without shoes. Her mother, Ella, often fed her children greens with flour gravy. She tied rags on her feet in the winter. Hamer was 6 when she started picking cotton. Because of her ability to read and write, she was given the job of working as a “time-keeper” in a sharecropping system designed to keep black workers in debt. In 1961, Hamer was sterilized without her consent when she went to a Sunflower County hospital for a minor surgery to remove a tumor. She was given a hysterectomy, which was known as the “Mississippi appendectomy.” The forced sterilization would compel her to fight for human rights. On Aug. 31, 1962, Hamer and 17 other people took a bus to Indianola, the county seat of Sunflower County, “to register to become first-class citizens,” They were denied because they couldn't pass the literacy test. Hamer became a SNCC community organizer and helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In 1964 she ran for Congress as a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party candidate against Democratic incumbent Jamie L. Whitten. Her story captivates me and she lived a life of service. Independence starts in the mind, I wish Black people freedom, peace, and fearlessness. We ARE and CAN BE so much more. #fannielouhamer #herstory #blkherstory #blackgirlmagic #whensheleads #tofreedom https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ6YYfyjgF4/?utm_medium=tumblr
