I’m not saying I’m finished with this new perSISTER design for the Female Power Project. But I will post updates if I change it. Regardless, Fannie Lou Hamer’s story will remain the same. Here goes:

Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6, 1917–March 14, 1977)

It was inconvenient to the racist white establishment of Mississippi when Hamer decided, at the age of 45, that she wanted to register to vote. She was prevented by an arbitrary literacy test and then fired by her boss (“we’re not ready for that in Mississippi”) and kicked out of her house and shot at by white supremacists. She failed the test a second time. On the third time she passed, but when she went to vote she was told she needed to have two poll tax receipts. She eventually did pay for the receipts and it was inconvenient that she finally did vote. The Voting Rights Act was passed to prevent such voter suppression. (See RBG)

It was inconvenient that Hamer had no sense. “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.” (This fearlessness reminds me of Harriet Tubman’s)

It was inconvenient that Hamer had returned to Mississippi after attending a pro-citizenship conference in South Carolina. She was arrested and it took her a month to not-fully recover from the beating the police gave her. It was inconvenient that she never recovered because it proved the brutality of the white people in power there.

It was inconvenient that Hamer was so gifted at organizing voter registration drives like the Freedom Summer.

It was inconvenient that Hamer was so good at hosting and nurturing activists of all colors.

It was inconvenient that Hamer could quote a Bible passage to support every social justice initiative she embraced.

It was inconvenient when Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to contest the legitimacy of the all-white “official delegation” to the 1964 Democratic convention from that state. It was so inconvenient that President Lyndon Johnson had to interrupt the broadcast of her testimony to the credentials committee. He was afraid of it looking like the “Negroes” were taking over the Democratic party platform, and that too many scared white people would vote Republican. (Sound familiar?) After this election the racial alignment of the parties did shift, starting in the South.

In 1971 it was inconvenient that Hamer co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, created “to increase the number of women in all aspects of political life—as elected and appointed officials, as judges in state and federal courts, and as delegates to national conventions.”

More than anything else, it was inconvenient that Hamer told her story so eloquently, authentically, and clearly. It was inconvenient that people couldn’t ignore her words. “…but if I can’t tell the truth—just tell me to sit down—because I have to tell it like it is.”

At her funeral service in 1977 Andrew Young said, “None of us would be where we are today had she not been here then.”

Here are my sources and some really great resources:
Film, “This Little Light of Mine, The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer” https://www.fannielou.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer
http://www.crmvet.org/docs/flh64.htm
https://timeline.com/hamer-speech-voting-rights-d5f6ddc7470a
This is a very interesting text laying out the racial politics in the US during the 1964 election. It has everything to do with what we are seeing now:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/spring/lbj-and-white-backlash-1.html