Black History Month / Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer 1917 to 1977
Civil Rights Organizer

Fannie Lou Hamer was very important in the civil rights movement, she help Blacks get registered to vote. She worked very hard in Mississippi Freedom Summer a campaign to register as many Blacks as possible. This was organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee {S.N.C.C.} which Hamer worked with. Other groups participated also C.O.R.E. and N.A.A.C.P.

Hard work is a understatement for what Hamer did! While trying to organize Blacks to vote, the Ku Klux Klan was hunting down organizers to kill them, preferable lynching them.

This was a very brave Black women! She took a leading role in Freedom Summer
in Mississippi. Mississippi was the front line in war for civil rights for Blacks. More organizer in the Civil Rights Movement came up missing or dead in  Mississippi then any other state.

She also worked in 1964 as the chair- person of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to put pressure on Lyndon B. Johnson re- election campaign, so that he would sign the Civil Rights bill for Blacks in return for their support and vote!

Hamer also worked with Martian Luther King Jr. poor people campaign. Hamer worked on many projects supporting poor Black people. She worked also with Head-start program for young children, and Freedom Farm Cooperative.

She is best known for speaking out and be being blunt about the conditions of poor Black people living in American! Towards the end of her life she spoke out about and against the Vietnam War!

Fannie Lou Hamer we thank you and love you for your fight for poor Black people.

*NOTE
We may not be poor as we used to be as a people, but we still have a long was to go! Hamer understood the only way a poor people can lift them themselves  up was through education!!! Hamer gets over looked a lot by history, but she was one of the key figures in get the head- start program going for our children!

Peace, love and Unity