“Actually, the world and America is upset and the only way to bring about a change is to upset it more.” – Fannie Lou Hamer
Because historical context matters. I have admired Fannie Lou Hamer from the first time I learned about her, during a Black History class at the University of Iowa. I learned alot of Black history at Iowa, minoring in African American studies. It has shaped who I am as a Black woman and my commitment to the value of education as a vehicle for shifting awareness and conscious and promoting societal change.
I think it is important to really understand the powerful voice and courage of Fannie Lou Hamer.
In one of his last official acts as president, Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 recipients, including a posthumous award to civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, who died in 1977.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values or security of the United States, world peace or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.
Born Oct. 6, 1917, Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper with a sixth-grade education, worked tirelessly to help thousands of Black residents in her home state to register and vote. Because of those efforts, Hamer and several others were arrested in Winona on June 9, 1963, while returning home from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina. Hamer and three others, including 15-year-old June Johnson, were viciously beaten at the hands of local law enforcement. The men carried Mrs. Hamer to a cell with two other Black prisoners and ordered one to beat her with a blackjack. She pleaded with them, “You mean you would do this to your own race?” When one prisoner became too exhausted to continue beating her, another was forced to take over. Mrs. Hamer called the violence in Winona “the most horrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life.” The activists were released four days later on June 12.
In December 1963, an all-white male jury acquitted all five white defendants named in the federal complaint.
Hamer continued to persevere and went on to lead the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign, a voter registration drive to help Black Mississippians register to vote. Later that year, as a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, she also challenged the state’s all white segregated delegation, and spoke out about the plight of Black people in Mississippi at the Democratic National Convention. Because of her testimony at the convention, she became an influential figure in the fight for Black liberation in the South.
Hamer was also a humanitarian providing clothing, housing and jobs for the poorest residents of the Mississippi Delta – Black and white. She brought the first Head Start program to the state and she launched a Freedom Farm and Pig Bank so impoverished residents could have both fresh vegetables and meat in their diet.
Because of her love for children and having been left sterilized by a white doctor who gave her a hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent during a routine operation, Hamer and her husband also adopted four infant girls whose families were unable to care for them. Their last surviving child, Jacqueline, died in 2023.
Hamer died on March 14, 1977, of breast cancer, hypertension and the aftereffects of the jailhouse beating. Ms. Hamer never fully recovered from the attack; she lost vision in one of her eyes and suffered permanent kidney damage, which contributed to her death. She was 59.
I encourage you to listen to her story, her testimony of her efforts to vote, her eviction from the plantation where she had worked for 18 years, and the horrible beating in the jail.
“When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don’t speak out ain’t nobody going to speak out for you.”
“Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.”
Learn more about the cost of activism during the civil rights movement and the courage of so many at:
To me, Fannie Lou Hamer is a true Blackwildgirl — a black woman willing to fight for what she believes in, who has a clear calling, and is willing to take action and speak up.
This is a season for action and vigilance. May we all be inspired by Fannie Lou Hamer to speak up and take action.
Consider writing a letter to Higher Education as part of an ongoing project with the University of Minnesota Libraries, digital open access project. Learn more at:
We are currently accepting letters for a special issue on the United States election reflections and higher education.
Learn more about my journey:
Read my new book, Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower, and companion journal (paperback, ebook, and audiobook – self recorded).
https://www.amazon.com/Blackwildgirl-Companion-Journal-Finding-Superpower/dp/1647427134I
If you are working in higher education (graduate student, faculty member, administrator, independent scholar), and see yourself as a future world changer, in the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer, Delores Huerto, Rosemary Christensen, and Helen Zia, and so many others, please consider joining us for an unparallel professional development experience, at the 13th Annual Future World Changers of the Academy (FWCA) Conference, “Empower, Elevate, and Excel: Leading the Academy into the Future,” taking place April 10–13, 2025, in Arlington, VA.
https://www.inclusive.vt.edu/Programs/FWCA.html
Learn more about world changers:
Delores Huerto, Huerta attended the University of the Pacific’s Delta College, where she trained as a teacher. She briefly taught in the 1950s, but after seeing so many of her students show up to class hungry and barefoot, she began her lifelong journey as an organizer and activist. In the 1960s, she founded the Agricultural Workers Association and led voter registration drives, specifically helping Hispanic Americans register to vote. Later in her career, she focused on women’s rights, specifically on encouraging more Hispanic women to run for office at the local, state, and federal levels.
Rosemary Christensen (Mole Lake/Bad River), who with Elgie Raymond (Rosebud Sioux Tribe), and Will Antell (White Earth Ojibwe) founded the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), committed to supporting educators as they enhance education for Indigenous children; maintaining Indigenous languages; and strategizing ways to impact legislation on the local, state, and federal levels.
Helen Zia is a Chinese American journalist and activist for Asian American, LGBTQ, and women’s rights. Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Helen attended Princeton and graduated as a part of its first class of women. Soon after, she enrolled in Tufts University medical school, but quit two years later to join the Detroit construction laborers and community activists. Her work in Detroit coincided with the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, and her journalism helped rally the Asian American community to speak up. Since her journalist days, Helen has also authored a diverse array of books including Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People and more recently Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao’s Revolution.