Approximately two months after Sims, on August 22, 1964, civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party spoke before the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention. In her televised speech, she recounted the violent opposition she encountered when attempting to register to vote and criticized Mississippi’s exclusion of Black Americans from the all-white Democratic Party.[i]
[i]See Janice D. Hamlet, “Fannie Lou Hamer: The Unquenchable Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 5, Special Issue: The Voices of African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement (May, 1996), pp. 560-576.
“In 1961, Hamer received a hysterectomy by a white doctor without her consent while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. Such forced sterilization of Black women, as a way to reduce the Black population, was so widespread it was dubbed a “Mississippi appendectomy.” Unable to have children of their own, the Hamers adopted two daughters.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/28/ethiopian-women-given-contraceptives-israel
I am a bit surprised by Miss Hamer’s openness to speaking at and attending the Democratic National Convention, a convention which notably barely gave her the time of day and relegated her platform to a footnote upon its own. However, I appreciate that she spoke of the issues in the first place.
Fannie Lou Harmer’s advocacy consisted addressing the challenges and injustices faced by Black Americans in exercising their political rights within the Democratic Party.
Fannie Lou Hamer voiced her concerns about the clear exclusion of black individuals from voting and political rights, especially in regards to the Democratic Party.
Fannie Lou Hamer symbolized the Mississippi movement. Johnson did not want her testimony to be seen on live TV, so he called for a press conference to talk about a nine-year anniversary. However, his attempt to block her voice backfired as the news media talked about the interruption, day after day.
Fannie Lou Hamer is still admired today. One of her quotes “We are not free until we are all free” is something that strives me until this day to fight for equity and better opportunities for low-income neighborhoods, individuals, and families.