08/31/2026
https://youtu.be/M3n6nI7-Z4Y?si=KeYyLmCOBVC0yoQ7
On August 31, 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer attempted to vote in her hometown in Mississippi. She was denied because of her race. She was fired from her job by her boss and forced to leave her home and go into hiding due to threats of violence for attempting to vote.
Fannie Lou Hamer was a Black polio survivor who had enduring physical disabilities as a result of polio and beatings by police. She was forcibly sterilized without her knowledge and consent. She went on to adopt four children. She is credited with coining the term "Mississippi appendectomy" to refer to involuntary sterilization.
Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights leader in the Freedom Democratic Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Women's Freedom Caucus, and the Freedom Farm Cooperative. She was thanked by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden.
