Fannie Lou Hamer

She was the last of 20 children of Lou Ella and James Lee Townsend, and the family moved to a Ruleville plantation when she was two. She went into the cotton at six. School ran only between picking seasons, in one room, and she was good at it: spelling bees, poetry from memory, until she left at 12 to help feed her parents. She had polio and picked 200 to 300 pounds a day anyway. In church study she learned scripture closely enough that colleagues marvelled at how easily she moved between a passage and whatever argument she was making. In 1944 the plantation owner discovered she could read and write and made her his timekeeper. She married Perry Hamer the next year and stayed on that place another 18.

She was 44 and had never voted when organizers turned up at her church in the summer of 1962 and explained that the Constitution said she could. What followed came fast: the courthouse, the eviction, the Winona jail, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the testimony to the credentials committee at Atlantic City that a sitting president called a surprise press conference to bury. Three campaigns for Congress. BriefHistory has that record and what it took out of the movement. This page is about what it took out of her.

In 1961, before any of it, she entered a hospital to have a uterine tumor removed and came out sterilized. Nobody had asked her. The operation was routine enough under Mississippi's compulsory sterilization program that Black patients had a name for it, and that name — the Mississippi appendectomy — is credited to her. She and Perry adopted four girls. One of them, Dorothy Jean, was refused admission at the local hospital because of who her mother was and died at 22 of internal bleeding. Hamer was hospitalized for nervous exhaustion in January 1972 and again after a breakdown two years later. She also called abortion legalized murder, in a 1969 speech at the White House, reading it and birth control alike as instruments aimed at poor Black people.

Freedom Farm, the cooperative she built in Sunflower County out of a donated herd of pigs, put 35 federally subsidized houses on the ground and ran out of money in 1975. She died at Taborian Hospital in Mound Bayou on March 14, 1977, of complications of hypertension and breast cancer, at 59. The church was full and an overflow service at the Ruleville high school drew more than 1,500 people, where Andrew Young told them none of them would be where they were had she not been where she was. The National Women's Hall of Fame took her in 1993. On January 4, 2025, 48 years after her death, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Fannie Lou Hamer's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party company
  Co-founded to contest the seating of the all-white state delegation 1964
• To Praise Our Bridges book
  Her autobiography, made with Julius Lester and Mary Varela 1967
• Freedom Farm Cooperative company
  Started with a pig bank of five boars and 50 gilts from the National Council of Negro Women 1969
• Legal action against Sunflower County case
  She led a suit over segregation the county was still practicing illegally 1970
• National Women's Political Caucus company
  Co-founded to recruit and fund women of every race for public office 1971

• October 6, 1917 aged 0 Born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the 20th child of sharecroppers
• 1923 aged ~6 Starts picking cotton at six The sharecroppers' school opened only between picking seasons.
• 1930 aged ~13 Leaves school at 12 to support her parents By 13 she was picking up to 300 pounds a day while living with polio.
• 1944 aged ~27 The plantation owner learns she is literate and makes her timekeeper
• 1945 aged ~28 Marries Perry Hamer, a tractor driver on the same plantation
• 1961 aged ~44 Sterilized without consent during surgery for a uterine tumor She is credited with coining the phrase Mississippi appendectomy for the practice.
• 1962 aged ~45 Goes to the courthouse to register and is evicted the same night
• 1969 aged ~52 Founds the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County It secured 35 subsidized houses before the money ran out in 1975.
• March 14, 1977 aged 59 Dies at Taborian Hospital in Mound Bayou at 59 Complications of hypertension and breast cancer.

• Lyndon B. Johnson 1908–1973
  36th President who signed the Civil Rights Act and launched the Great Society programs. called a press conference against her
• Shirley Chisholm 1924–2005
  First Black woman elected to Congress and first woman to run for a major party's presidential nomination. co-founded the caucus with her
• Gloria Steinem b. 1934
  Writer and organizer who became one of the most visible leaders of second-wave feminism. co-founded the caucus with her
• Sojourner Truth 1797–1883
  Abolitionist and women's rights activist whose Ain't I a Woman? speech became a rallying cry for equality. honored in her name
• Joe Biden b. 1942
  46th president who enacted major infrastructure and climate legislation after decades in the Senate and vice presidency. awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom