Book Reviews for Fannie Lou Hamer the Life of a Civil Rights Icon

Efforts to preserve and promote Blackness history in Mississippi got a boost this calendar week through the Southern Poverty Law Centre.

The Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Museum in Belzoni was one of five museums across the South that received a $50,000 grant from the SPLC. The proclamation was made during a Zoom media briefing Tuesday forenoon.

"It will allow us to practise much-needed work around the museum," Director Helen Sims said in an interview subsequently the briefing, "then nosotros can keep to reach younger generations who haven't heard the stories."

SPLC officials said the museum was chosen through a recommendation by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, to enable it to continue to tell America's history through the Black perspective.

The Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Museum is dedicated to preserving Hamer's legacy and the legacy of other civil rights leaders in Mississippi. Information technology is the first time in the museum's 21-yr history that it has been awarded a grant, Sims said.

"Museums are all about telling stories," U.Due south. Rep. Val Demings, D-Florida, said of the SPLC grants. "And boy do Black people accept stories to tell."

Demings was on Zoom to talk most her nominated museum, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts in Eatonville, Florida. The Hurston museum also received a $fifty,000 grant.

The Hurston museum honors the author, who also was a collector of "work of artists of African ancestry." The museum tells Blackness history through visual arts and celebrates the heritage of Black artists.

Other museums receive SPLC grants

Three other museums were awarded grants from the Southern Poverty Law Center to aid sustain their mission and thrive in a postal service-pandemic world.

• Thiokol Memorial Project in Woodbine, Georgia, which memorializes the Thiokol-Woodbine explosion of 1971, in which 29 people were killed and 50 injured. The victims were by and large Black women who worked at the factory, which made flares for the military during the Vietnam War.
• The Mothers of Gynecology monument in Montgomery, Alabama, which raises awareness of the movement to remove Black women's reproductive organs, which started in the 1840s with Dr. Marion Sims, who experimented on the women without their consent and performed surgeries without anesthesia. The practice continued well into the 20th century. Some activists say medical racism withal exists today.
• Cecil Williams South Carolina Ceremonious Rights Museum in Orangeburg, South Carolina, which captures Due south Carolina'due south civil rights struggles through hundreds of photos taken by Cecil Williams over several decades.

Who is Fannie Lou Hamer?

Fannie Lou Hamer was a ceremonious rights activist, born in the Mississippi Delta in 1917, just a few years before women were given the right to vote. Although the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919 and ratified by a majority of states in 1920, Mississippi did not ratify the amendment until 1984 — 7 years after Hamer died.

The country as well did not formally ratify the 13th Amendment — the i that abolishes slavery — until 1995. But the paperwork wasn't sent to the Office of the Federal Register, then the ratification was not completed until 2013.

Hamer quit school at 12 to piece of work full time in the Delta'south cotton fields, simply continued learning by reading the Bible. In the 1960s, Hamer registered to vote — a task that wasn't easy since at that place were many obstacles in identify to foreclose Black people from voting, including a poll tax and literacy test.

She helped organize Freedom Summer activities and led voter registration drives with the Student Irenic Coordinating Commission in the early 1960s, as the civil rights motion was gaining momentum in Mississippi.

Hamer and her hubby, Perry "Pap" Hamer, adopted two daughters since Hamer was unable to bear children after she reportedly was "sterilized" by a local medico without her consent.

Although she was fired from her longtime task for registering to vote, Hamer continued to push for equal rights for Black people. She was a cofounder of the Mississippi Liberty Autonomous Party and attempted to run for Congress in 1964.

Although her entrada was unsuccessful, Hamer was able to bring Mississippi's ceremonious rights struggle to the nation's attention during a televised event at the Democratic National Convention.

Her activism Hamer led to her becoming a member of Mississippi's first integrated delegation in 1968.

Hamer was being beaten, shot at and jailed for her activism. Despite the attacks, she continued to fight for equality in many areas, including education. She filed lawsuits seeking justice and was successful at forcing the desegregation of Sunflower Canton schools.

Do you have a story to share? Contact Lici Beveridge at lbeveridge@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @licibev or Facebook at facebook.com/licibeveridge.

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/local/2022/01/11/fannie-lou-hamer-museum-awarded-grant-southern-poverty-law-center/9162050002/

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