Today is Fannie Lou Hamer’s birthday. She was born on this day in 1917.

Now, you know Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. Mrs. Hamer is one of Mississippi’s fiercest and most legendary heroes. She was a sharecropper, an activist for civil rights, women’s rights, voting rights, and a co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Many Mississippians believe Fannie Lou’s statue should be in the U.S. Capitol right now.

In August 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Fannie Lou delivered a stern testimony about the pains and struggles of poor Blacks and whites in this country, demanding that the country pay attention to the needs of the South. Just one year prior, she was beaten and jailed for helping to register Black voters in Mississippi. Mrs. Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party when the state party refused to let Black Americans attend the convention.

In her now-famous address at the convention, Fannie Lou declared, with tears streaming down her face, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Fannie Lou challenged our party and our country by asking, “Is this America, the land of the free and home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook because our lives are threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”

Change is here, Fannie Lou. We can be a new Mississippi. We can be a new South.

Here's another story I love about Fannie Lou Hamer. In 1962, Fannie led a group of Black Mississippians from Ruleville, Mississippi to the Indianola courthouse to register to vote. As they unloaded the bus, they noticed an armed and angry mob, snipers on the roof, and police waiting for them at the entry door. With courageous hearts, they tried to register anyway — but Fannie Lou was unsuccessful. 

On their way back to Ruleville, Mississippi, that same group was stopped by the police again. Something about the bus being too yellow. As they waited nervously for the bus driver, suddenly, a calming, powerful voice came from the back of the bus, singing “This Little Light of Mine.”

That voice was Fannie Lou Hamer, and this event inspired Freedom Summer of 1964 — a monumental Black voter registration program. The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) all supported the initiative.

It took Fannie Lou three times to register to vote. And even after passing the literacy test the third time, she couldn’t vote without paying the poll tax. But Fannie Lou was uncompromising and she obtained her poll-tax receipts.

So much has changed, and yet 2020 is our opportunity to keep moving Mississippi, the South, and our country forward, just like Fannie Lou did. Times are tough right now. Mississippi ranks last in health outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to hurt people. And racial injustice continues to take Black lives. Meanwhile, there is no leadership from Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in sight.

That’s why my commitment to working to bring everybody along together toward our new vision, to a new future, remains as strong as ever. We should follow Fannie Lou Hamer’s lead. Together, let’s unite, lift each other up, and put in the work over these next 28 days to bring positive change to Mississippi through new leadership in the Senate.

Let’s make Fannie Lou proud.

— Mike