Fannie Lou Hamer (; née Townsend; October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting and women's rights activist, community organizer, and leader of the civil rights movement. She was the vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Hamer also organized Mississippi's Freedom Summer along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, an organization created to recruit, train, and support women of all races who sought election to government offices.
Hamer began her civil rights activism in 1962, continuing it until her health declined nine years later. She was known for her use of spiritual hymns and biblical quotes, and for her resilience in leading the civil rights movement for black women in Mississippi. She was threatened, harassed, shot at, and assaulted by racists, including members of the police, while she was trying to register to vote. She later helped and encouraged thousands of Black people in Mississippi to become registered voters, and assisted hundreds of disenfranchised people in her area through her work in programs such as the Freedom Farm Cooperative. She ran for the U.S. House in 1964, losing to Jamie Whitten, and she ran for the Mississippi State Senate in 1971. In 1970, she led legal action against the government of Sunflower County, Mississippi, for continued illegal segregation.
Hamer died on March 14, 1977, aged 59, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Her memorial service was widely attended and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young delivered the eulogy. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. On January 4, 2025, President Joe Biden posthumously awarded Hamer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Early life, family, and education
Hamer was born as Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the last of the 20 children of Lou Ella and James Lee Townsend.
In 1919, the Townsends moved to Ruleville, Mississippi, to work as sharecroppers on W. D. Marlow's plantation. From age six, Hamer picked cotton with her family. During the winters of 1924 through 1930, she attended the one-room school provided for the sharecroppers' children, open between picking seasons. Hamer loved reading and excelled in spelling bees and reciting poetry, but at age 12 she had to leave school to help support her aging parents. By age 13, she would pick 200–300 pounds (90 to 140 kg) of cotton daily while living with polio.
Hamer continued to develop her reading and interpretation skills in Bible study at her church; in later years Lawrence Guyot admired her ability to connect "the biblical exhortations for liberation and [the struggle for civil rights] any time that she wanted to and move in and out to any frames of reference". In 1944, after the plantation owner discovered her literacy, she was selected as its time and record keeper. The following year she married Perry "Pap" Hamer, a tractor driver on the Marlow plantation, and they remained there for the next 18 years.
Hamer and her husband wanted very much to start a family, but in 1961, a doctor subjected Hamer to a hysterectomy without her consent while she was undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. Forced sterilization was a common method of population control in Mississippi that targeted poor, African-American women. Members of the Black community called the procedure a "Mississippi appendectomy". The Hamers later raised two girls they adopted, eventually adopting two more. One, Dorothy Jean, died at age 22 of internal hemorrhaging after she was denied admission to the local hospital because of her mother's activism.
Hamer became interested in the civil rights movement in the 1950s. She heard leaders of the local movement speak at annual Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) conferences, held in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. The attendees of the yearly conferences discussed black voting rights and other civil rights issues black communities in the area faced. She became a good friend of RCNL founder and head T. R. M. Howard.
On August 31, 1962, Hamer and 17 others attempted to vote but failed a literacy test, which meant that they could not vote. On December 4, just after she returned to her hometown, Hamer went to the courthouse in Indianola, where she took the test again, but she failed it again and she was turned away as a result. She told the registrar, "You'll see me every 30 days till I pass". On January 10, 1963, she took the test a third time. She was successful and was informed that she was now a registered voter in Mississippi. But when she attempted to vote that fall, she discovered her registration did not allow her to vote, as her county also required voters to have two poll tax receipts.
This requirement had emerged in some (mostly former Confederate) states after the right to vote was first given to men of all races by the 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. These laws, along with the literacy tests and local government acts of coercion, were used against black people and Native Americans. Hamer later paid for and acquired the requisite poll tax receipts.
As an example of how black citizens were disenfranchised in Mississippi, Hamer said that she "had never heard, until 1962, that black people could register and vote."
Hamer began to become more involved in the activism of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee after these incidents. She attended many Southern Christian Leadership Conferences (SCLC), where she sometimes taught classes, and various SNCC (pronounced "Snick") workshops. She traveled to gather signatures for petitions to attempt to be granted federal resources for impoverished black families across the South. In early 1963, she became a SNCC field secretary for voter registration and welfare programs. Many of these first attempts to register more black voters in Mississippi were met with the same problems Hamer had found in trying to register herself.
We been waitin' all our lives, and still gettin' killed, still gettin' hung, still gettin' beat to death. Now we're tired waitin'!
After she attempted to vote, Hamer was fired by her boss, but her husband was required to stay on the land until the end of the harvest. Hamer moved between homes over the next several days for protection. On September 10, 1962, while staying with friend Mary Tucker, Hamer was shot at 15 times in a drive-by shooting by racists. No one was injured in the event. The next day, Hamer and her family evacuated to nearby Tallahatchie County for three months, fearing retaliation by the Ku Klux Klan because she had attempted to vote.
I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared—but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.
On June 9, 1963, Hamer was returning from a voter registration workshop by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Charleston, South Carolina. Traveling by bus with co-activists, they stopped for a break in Winona, Mississippi. Some of the activists went inside a local cafe, but were refused service by the waitress. Shortly after, a Mississippi State highway patrolman took out his billy club and intimidated the activists into leaving. One of the group decided to take down the officer's license plate number; while doing so the patrolman and a police chief entered the cafe and arrested the party. Hamer left the bus and inquired if they could continue their journey back to Greenwood, Mississippi. At that point the officers arrested her as well. Once in county jail, Hamer's colleagues were beaten by the police in the booking room (including 15-year-old June Johnson, for not addressing officers as "sir"). Hamer was then taken to a cell where two inmates were ordered, by the state trooper, to beat her using a baton. The police ensured she was held down during the almost fatal beating, and when she started to scream, beat her further. Hamer was also groped repeatedly by officers during the assault. When she attempted to resist, she stated an officer, "walked over, took my dress, pulled it up over my shoulders, leaving my body exposed to five men". Another in her group was beaten until she was unable to talk; a third, a teenager, was beaten, stomped on, and stripped. An activist from SNCC came the next day to see if he could help but was beaten until his eyes were swollen shut when he did not address an officer in the expected deferential manner.