I wrote the following Op-Ed published today in The Press of Atlantic City in honor of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day.
 

The course of American political history was changed at Mississippi Avenue and the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, but we would never know it when walking by. And that is why I am calling on the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to acknowledge the role that civil and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer played in fighting for voting rights, equality and social justice by erecting a statue on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City’s Historic Boardwalk Hall that will serve to educate visitors about the importance of this powerful woman, and how she changed political parties in the United States.

Monuments are built to memorialize, yes. Like tombstones, they mark a life lived. But at their best they are more than monuments to the past. Who has not glanced up at President Lincoln seated in his chair and felt gratitude, or walked the path of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and felt the painful enormity of the sacrifices made? Memorials inspire us. They educate us. They motivate us. They say to us: I too struggled. I fought, and the fight was worth fighting.

And so it is appropriate to recognize that a significant battle in the war for civil rights for African Americans was waged in Atlantic City. And the courage of those who fought in that battle—and particularly Fannie Lou Hamer, who led the charge—should be acknowledged and celebrated on that historic battleground.

The case for memorializing Hamer’s contributions to both opening up our political parties and advocating for voting rights is clear: In 1964, during the Democratic National Convention, Hamer and other Mississippians and civil rights activists joined to together to form the interracial Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the segregationalist all-white Democratic party delegation from Mississippi. In nationally televised testimony before the convention’s credentials committee in Boardwalk Hall, Hamer movingly told of the results of trying to register to vote: She and other black women were severely beaten, threatened with death, shot at, and Hamer and her husband were evicted from the farm that they had worked for years...

You can read the full Op-Ed here.