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Fannie Lou Hamer and Voting Rights

Focusing on Details: Spotlight

All documents and text associated with this activity are printed below, followed by a worksheet for student responses.

Introduction

Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917 as the 20th child of parents who were sharecroppers. (Sharecroppers were tenant farmers who lived and worked on someone else’s land and gave a share of the crops to the landowner. It was almost impossible for the sharecroppers to earn enough to buy their own farm.) Hamer grew up picking cotton on a plantation, attended school only intermittently, and left school at age 12 to work full time. Fannie Lou married Perry Hamer ("Pap") in 1944. The couple and their two adopted daughters were sharecroppers on a plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi.

In August 1962, Hamer attended a meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Hamer said: “Until then I’d never heard of no mass meeting and I didn’t know that a Negro could register to vote” (Bond, Julian, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965. 1987). At the meeting, Hamer volunteered to go to the courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi, the next day to register to vote – her right as a U.S. citizen.

Read the highlighted portion below, where Fannie Lou Hamer described her experience registering to vote in Mississippi in 1962. Then answer the questions that follow.


Name:
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Worksheet

Fannie Lou Hamer and Voting Rights

Focusing on Details: Spotlight

Examine the documents included in this activity and write your response in the space provided.


  1. Pap told Fannie Lou that the plantation owner was "raising cain." What does that expression mean?
  2. Why was the plantation owner angry that Hamer registered to vote?
  3. How did he threaten her?
  4. What does the interaction between Hamer and the plantation owner tell you about what was happening in Mississippi and the South during the Civil Rights Movement?
  5. Read the first two paragraphs on the page. What happened to Fanny Lou Hamer and the group of people who tried to register to vote?
  6. Click on "View Entire Document" and look at page 3 of the document. What was Hamer’s response to the plantation owner after he threatened her? And what happened as a result?

Your Response




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Activity Element

Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

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Conclusion

Fannie Lou Hamer and Voting Rights

Focusing on Details: Spotlight

Fannie Lou Hamer gave this testimony during the 1964 Democratic National Convention. When it was broadcast on major TV networks, she became a national spokesperson for civil rights.

Hamer ended her testimony with the following question: "I question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"

In two sentences, explain why you think Hamer chose to use these contrasting images to depict what African Americans were facing: "the land of the free and the home of the brave" versus "our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily."

Your Response




Document

Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

8/22/1964

Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer made these remarks (please note that they include racist language and depictions of racial violence) to the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee during the 1964 Democratic National Convention (DNC), which was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Hamer, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), had unsuccessfully run for Congress with the support of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).  SNCC had formed the MFDP to expand Black voter registration and challenge the Mississippi's all-white Democratic Party. MFDP members came to the Democratic National Convention to claim the seats for Mississippi instead of the official Mississippi delegation, claiming that the official delegates didn't represent Mississippi because Black people were systematically excluded from voting.

The DNC Credentials Committee heard MFDP's challenge, during which Hamer testified. She told a harrowing story of trying to register to vote in Mississippi and the violence she encountered. When Hamer's story was broadcast on major TV networks, she became a national spokeswoman for civil rights.

This document uses the term "negroes" to refer to Black people, which was commonly accepted in that era, but is outdated and inappropriate today.

Transcript

[Beginning on line 18]

Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer

Mr. [sic] Hamer: Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.

It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.

We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.

After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register.

After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. Before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know - did Pap tell you what I said?"

And I said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "Well I mean that." He said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." Said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," said, "you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi."

And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself."

I had to leave that same night.

On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.

And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people - to use the restaurant - two of the people wanted to use the washroom.

The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."

I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too.

As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the five people in a highway patrolman's car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the five workers was in and said, "Get that one there." When I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.

I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'yes, sir,' [racial epithet]? Can you say 'yes, sir'?"

And they would say other horrible names.

She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"

"So, well, say it."

She said, "I don't know you well enough."

They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.

And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, "We are going to check this."

They left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."

I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.

The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face.

I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.

After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.

The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit on my feet - to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.

One white man - my dress had worked up high - he walked over and pulled my dress and [I] pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.

I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.

All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Thank you.

(Applause)
This primary source comes from the Collection LBJ-DNC: Records of the Democratic National Committee.
Full Citation: Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee; 8/22/1964; DNC Papers Series 2; Organizational, Research, and Campaign Records, 1960 - 1968; Collection LBJ-DNC: Records of the Democratic National Committee, ; Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, TX. [Online Version, https://docsteach.org/documents/document/hamer-dnc, March 29, 2024]


Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

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Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

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Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

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Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

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Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

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Remarks of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer from the Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee

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