Fannie Lou Hamer, born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, was the last of 20 children to sharecroppers Ella and James Lee Townsend. From age six to twelve, Hamer picked cotton in the summer and attended a one-room schoolhouse for sharecropper children. By age 13, Hamer dropped out of school to help support her parents by working in the field to pick 200-300 pounds of cotton a day, in spite of living with polio.

Hamer continued to hone her reading skills through Bible studies at church. In 1944, she married Perry “Pap” Hamer. In 1961, Fannie Lou underwent surgery to remove a uterine tumor. At the same time, the white doctor performed an unauthorized hysterectomy. This outrageous practice of forced sterilization, Hamer dubbed “Mississippi appendectomy,” was commonly perpetuated on poor, black Americans as a form of population control. She and Pap subsequently adopted two children.

n 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer learned of her constitutional right to the ballot box when she attended the annual Regional Council of Negro Leadership conference in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Though she tried to register to vote, an unreasonable voter registration test quelled her quest. Upon her return to the plantation where she and her husband lived and worked, the boss told her to withdraw her registration because “we’re not ready for that in Mississippi.” Hamer replied, “I didn’t try to register you. I tried to register myself.” Hamer was fired and forced to leave the plantation. She was subsequently shot at and moved to a neighboring county to avoid Ku Klux Klan retaliation for her attempts to vote. Hamer passed the voter registration test on her third try, only to learn that she then needed two poll tax receipts to complete her registration. She later acquired the necessary receipts by paying a fee.

Fannie Lou Hamer went on to become a civil rights activist and practiced civil disobedience to protest segregation. She was arrested, jailed, and severely beaten for her demonstrations, which left her with permanent kidney damage. Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to insure black people’s voices were heard in the all-white Democratic party. As part of her state’s 1964 delegation to the Democratic National Convention, Hamer testified, “all of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens.” Though Hamer suffered ridicule by both whites and blacks for her thick Southern accent, lack of formal education, and common appearance, she had many supporters, including Malcolm X. Her efforts lead to the Democratic Party’s inclusion of a clause that demanded states’ delegations practice equality of representation. In 1972, Hamer was elected as a Democratic Party delegate from Mississippi. She also worked with the National Council of Negro Women and helped convene the National Women’s Political Caucus in the 1970s. She died in 1977 from complications of hypertension and breast cancer.