43 Facts About Fannie Lou Hamer

1. Fannie Lou Hamer was a catalyst in the development of various programs to aid the poor in her community, including the Delta Ministry, an extensive community development program, and the Freedom Farms Corporation in 1969, a non-profit operation designed to help needy families raise food and livestock, provide social services, encourage minority business opportunities, and offer educational assistance.

2. Fannie Lou Hamer said, "We didn't come for no two seats when all of us is tired.

3. Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the representatives who testified before the party's Credentials Committee.

4. Fannie Lou Hamer worked for the Marlows, first as a sharecropper and then—after the owner learned that she was literate—as the timekeeper.

5. Fannie Lou Hamer spent the last ten years of her life organizing for low-income housing, child day-care, economic development, and school desegregation.

6. Fannie Lou Hamer began working in the fields at age six when the plantation owner promised her goods from the commissary store.

7. Fannie Lou Hamer's parents, Jim and Fannie Lou Hamer Ella Townsend, were sharecroppers who fed their whole family on $1.25 a day.

8. Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, in 1917, the youngest of 20 children.

9. Fannie Lou Hamer captured national attention as a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which eventually succeeded in electing many blacks to national office in Mississippi.

10. Fannie Lou Hamer died of cancer on March 14, 1977, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

11. Fannie Lou Hamer became active in helping with the voter registration efforts.

12. Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activist whose passionate depiction of her own suffering in a racist society helped focus attention on the plight of African-Americans throughout the South.

13. Around the age of 12, Fannie Lou Hamer dropped out of school in order to work full time and help out her family.

14. Fannie Lou Hamer's was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

15. Fannie Lou Hamer's received a Doctor of Law from Shaw University, and honorary degrees from Columbia College Chicago in 1970 and Howard University in 1972.

16. Fannie Lou Hamer's was buried in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi.

17. Fannie Lou Hamer's came out of an extended period in hospital for nervous exhaustion in January 1972, and was hospitalized again in January 1974 for a nervous breakdown.

18. Fannie Lou Hamer's said she was "tired of all this beating" and "there's so much hate.

19. Fannie Lou Hamer stated this would lead to a reformed convention in 1968.

20. Fannie Lou Hamer's was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature.

21. Fannie Lou Hamer's needed more than a month to recuperate from the beatings and never fully recovered.

22. Fannie Lou Hamer's became a field secretary for voter registration and welfare programs for the SNCC.

23. Fannie Lou Hamer's began to take direct political action in the civil rights movement.

24. Fannie Lou Hamer's heard leaders in the local movement speak at annual Regional Council of Negro Leadership conferences, held in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

25. Fannie Lou Hamer's was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

26. Fannie Lou Hamer's was known for her use of spiritual hymnals and quotes and her resilience in leading the civil rights movement for black women in Mississippi.

27. Fannie Lou Hamer's was the co-founder and vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

28. Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader.

29. Fannie Lou Hamer is one of 28 civil rights icons depicted on the Buffalo, New York Freedom Wall.

30. Fannie Lou Hamer died of complications of hypertension and breast cancer on March 14, 1977, aged 59, at Taborian Hospital, Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

31. Fannie Lou Hamer is credited with coining the phrase "Mississippi appendectomy" as a euphemism for the involuntary or uninformed sterilization of black women, common in the South in the 1960s.

32. Fannie Lou Hamer used the success of the bank to begin fundraising for the main farming corporation.

33. Fannie Lou Hamer made it her mission to make land more accessible to African-Americans.

34. Fannie Lou Hamer objected to this, and consequently pioneered the Freedom Farm Cooperative in 1969, an attempt to redistribute economic power across groups and to solidify an economic standing amongst African-Americans.

35. In 1972, Fannie Lou Hamer was elected as a national party delegate.

36. In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer helped co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, in an effort to prevent the regional all-white Democratic party's attempts to stifle African-American voices, and to ensure there was a party for all people that did not stand for any form of exploitation and discrimination (especially towards minorities).

37. Fannie Lou Hamer left the bus and inquired if they could continue their journey back to Greenwood, Mississippi.

38. Fannie Lou Hamer had begun to become more involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee after these incidents.

39. On January 10, 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer took the literacy test a third time.

40. Fannie Lou Hamer told the registrar that "You'll see me every 30 days till I pass".

41. Fannie Lou Hamer moved between homes over the next several days for protection.

42. Fannie Lou Hamer became interested in the civil rights movement in the 1950s.

43. Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting and women's rights activist, community organizer, and a leader in the civil rights movement.