Historical marker honoring Fannie Lou Hamer to be unveiled in March

Mississippi will soon unveil a historical marker honoring the life of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.

The marker, which will stand in front of the Sunflower County Courthouse in Indianola, Miss., was recently approved by the County Board of Supervisors, the Greenwood Commonwealth reports. The unveiling will take place on Friday, March 27.

Hamer was born in 1917 in rural Montgomery County, Miss., the youngest of 20 children. The family moved to Sunflower County when she was two. From the age of 6, Hamer picked cotton with her sharecropping family, and by the time she was 13, she could pick 200 to 300 pounds a day. At 27, she became the plantation’s time and record keeper when the owner discovered she was literate.

She coined the phrase “Mississippi appendectomy” after being sterilized without her consent at age 44.

The following year, 1962, Hamer learned she had the right to vote from volunteers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and she became involved with the civil rights movement. She was kicked off the plantation after she attempted to register to vote.

Because of her activism, Hamer was shot at, arrested and brutally beaten within an inch of her life in jail. Despite constant threats to her life, she organized voter registration drives and gathered signatures on petitions. She became field secretary of SNCC, and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964.

Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 and traveled to the Democratic National Convention to stand as Mississippi’s official delegation. Although unsuccessful in ’64, the MFDP was seated in 1968, and Hamer was elected as a national party delegate in 1972.

In Mississippi, Hamer fought for economic equality, which included creating a business incubator to provide resources and retraining, financial counseling, a scholarship fund and a housing agency.

During her life, Hamer was awarded numerous honorary degrees and other honors. She was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993.

Hamer died of breast cancer and complications of hypertension in 1977 when she was 59.

A statue of Ms. Hamer is at the site of her grave in Ruleville, Miss., also in Sunflower County.