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SPEAKER_00: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Encyclopedia Wamanica. Today's politician was a leader in the civil rights movement who ardently fought for free and fair elections. Let's talk about Fannie Lou Hammer.
SPEAKER_03: Fannie Lou Townsend was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi
SPEAKER_00: to sharecroppers Lou Ella and James Townsend in 1917. She was the youngest of 20 children and grew up in poverty. In the early 20th century, the South was fraught with racial violence and discrimination. As a young girl, Fannie found that a portion of her family was in the same family as her mother, and she was a young girl. Fannie found that a portion of her family's animal stock had been poisoned. She later said, "'That white man did it just because "'we were getting somewhere. "'All of this is no secret in the state of Mississippi.'" By the age of six, Fannie had begun working with her family picking cotton on W.D. Marlowe's plantation, and at 12, she dropped out of school to work instead. Even when she suffered from polio as a teenager, she still managed to pick upwards of 100 pounds of cotton a day. Between picking, Fannie read, performed poetry, and studied the Bible at the local church. The owner of the plantation where Fannie worked was impressed with Fannie's literary comprehension and selected her to serve as plantation timekeeper. In 1945, Fannie married tractor driver Perry Hammer, who she described as a good man with few words. Though she wanted to have children, a white doctor performed a hysterectomy without her consent while she was undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. This horrifying, cruel practice of forced sterilization was used by Mississippi to control population growth amongst black people and was so common that it had a nickname, a Mississippi appendectomy. Fannie and Perry adopted two children, one of whom died after being denied medical treatment because of her mother's activism. When Fannie and Perry's daughter died, they adopted her two children as well. In the 1950s, Fannie attended conferences held by the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, which discussed racial inequity and civil rights issues. She was especially frustrated by efforts restricting black Americans' right to vote. In 1962, Fannie became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, and led more than a dozen volunteers to register to vote. After failing a confusing literacy test designed to disenfranchise black voters, their registration was denied. The police stopped their bus as they drove home from the courthouse and fined them $100 because the bus was too yellow. Fannie sang to the passengers to keep their spirits up, which became a trademark of her activism. ["This Little Light of Mine"] The owner of the plantation where she worked, Marlo, fired Fannie for her attempt to register and confiscated her car and home, but forced Perry to stay on until the harvest. In addition to threats to her livelihood, Fannie also had to contend with threats to her life. She survived a shooting in which 16 shots were fired at her and subsequently moved for three months to avoid further retaliation from the Ku Klux Klan. Fannie passed the unfair literacy test on her third try, and her voting registration was finally accepted. But when she attempted to vote, she learned that in order to vote, she had to have two poll-tax receipts, another attempt to disenfranchise black and native voters. In 1963, Fannie was returning from a SNCC citizenship training program when her bus was stopped in Winona, Mississippi. She and other activists were arrested for sitting in a whites-only section at a restaurant. In jail, she was beaten, sexually assaulted, and left with severe physical injuries from which she never fully recovered, including kidney and leg damage and a blood clot. In 1964, Fannie organized Freedom Summer, a volunteer campaign of black and white student activists to register more black voters in the South. That same year, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which registered more than 60,000 new black voters across the state. When Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party members fought to be recognized as an official delegation to the Democratic National Convention, Fannie delivered such an impactful televised speech that President Lyndon B. Johnson feared his reelection chances would be hurt. LBJ called for a sudden news conference during her speech to divert attention away from her. But Fannie's words about racial prejudice resounded with many, and her speech was aired on the evening news, broadcasting it to a larger audience than the one LBJ took over. She asked her television audience, is this America?
SPEAKER_05:
SPEAKER_00: Her speech led to the establishment of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as the state's first integrated delegation four years later in 1968. That same year, she announced her candidacy for the Mississippi House of Representatives, but was barred from the ballot. Throughout the 1960s, Fannie was a notable activist with a reputation as a powerful speaker. She gave speeches across the country fighting for civil rights. In 1968, Fannie shifted her strategy and addressed racial injustice through economic means. She created a pig bank and raised piglets to distribute to black families. The following year, she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative and purchased land to build black co-ops. The land was also used for low-income housing, some of which still exists today. Fannie's work with the Freedom Farm Cooperative led her to buy a home for herself, and her success served as an inspiration for many black Americans. But in 1975, as a result of lack of funding, the FFC disbanded. In 1971, Fannie co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus, which continues to empower women to run for office regardless of skin color. In the mid-1970s, Fannie's health began to deteriorate. In 1976, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. A year later, in 1977, Fannie died in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. She was 59 years old. On her tombstone is one of her famous quotes, "'I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.'" Fannie Lou Hammer was a civil rights icon who empowered black Americans to fight for freedom. She once said, "'When I liberate others, I liberate myself.'" All month, we're talking about politicians. For more on why we're doing what we're doing, check out our newsletter, Wamanica Weekly. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Encyclopedia Wamanica, and follow me directly on Twitter, at Jenny M. Kaplan. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow. Before we go, we need to talk.
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