Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer ( born October 6, 1917 in Ruleville, Montgomery County, Mississippi, as Fannie Lou Townsend, † March 14, 1977 in Mound Bayou, Mississippi) was a black American civil rights campaigner. In the 1960s, she fought in the U.S. for the right to vote and equal rights for African Americans.

Life

Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of 20 siblings of a cotton picker family; her grandfather was still a slave. In 1944 she married Perry Hamer ( 1912-1992 ) and worked as Baumwollpflückerin on a plantation in Sunflower County. In 1962, she tried to register on the electoral roll at the Sunflower County. She lost her job, was repeatedly arrested, tortured and jailed in 1963 in Winona. She was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and became its second president. In 1969 she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative, gave the needy blacks and whites work and this supported financially. The co- existed until 1974.