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U.S. NEWS Saturday 7 OctOber 2017

Events mark centennial of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS outlawed practices that
Associated Press massively disenfranchised
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — black citizens.
Mississippi-born civil rights Mississippi sent integrated
activist Fannie Lou Hamer delegations to later Demo-
is being commemorated cratic conventions. Brown-
Friday on what would have Wright said she sees a di-
been her 100th birthday. rect connection between
Community gatherings are the work done by Hamer
being held in her home- and other Freedom Demo-
town of Ruleville, where a crats and the election of
larger-than-life statue of Barack Obama in 2008 as
her was dedicated in a the first black president of
memorial garden several the United States.
years ago. The small Sun- Some in the Mississippi Del-
flower County city is about ta remember Hamer for
110 miles (180 km) north of practical ways she helped
Jackson. improve their lives.
Hamer — who was 59 Carl Watson, a 58-year-
when she died of cancer in old Ruleville resident, was
1977 — was famous for say- the second-youngest of
ing she was “sick and tired 11 children and said that
of being sick and tired” of A looming statue of Fannie Lou Hamer is displayed prominently in the Fannie Lou Hamer Memo- until he was 12 years old,
the abuse that African- rial Garden in Ruleville, Miss., Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017, as a tribute honoring the civil rights activ- his family lived on a cotton
Americans suffered in the ist. Hamer was a sharecropper who was beaten for registering other African-Americans to vote farm in two shacks — one
during the Jim Crow era, and gained international attention in 1964 when she testified before the
segregated South. credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention, as she and others challenged the for his mother and the girls
She was fired from the sitting of an all-white delegation from Mississippi. A centennial celebration marking her birth is and one for his father and
plantation where she planned for Friday. the boys. In about 1972,
worked as a sharecropper (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) Hamer and her husband,
in 1962 because she and a Freedom Democratic Par- then white officers ordered black voters amid chang- Perry “Pap” Hamer, helped
few other black Mississippi- ty group that challenged black inmates to beat her. es facilitated by the Civil the Watsons find a better
ans registered to vote. the seating of the all-white “All of this is on account of Rights Act of 1964, which home in Ruleville.
Flonzie BrownWright was a Mississippi delegation at we want to register, to be- outlawed segregation Carl Watson said it was the
young civil rights activist in the Democratic National come first-class citizens,” in public places and dis- first time his family had a
1964 when she met Hamer, Convention in Atlantic Hamer said. crimination in employment house with running water
who was a generation old- City, New Jersey. “And if the Freedom Dem- practices, and the Voting and indoor plumbing: “We
er and was known for ad- “Because of her thunder- ocratic Party is not seated Rights Act of 1965, which moved to heaven.”q
vocating equal rights even ous voice and the passion now, I question America.
when doing so put her own in her eyes, she was cho- Is this America, the land
life in peril. sen to speak before the of the free and the home
In 1964, Hamer was part of credentialing committee,” of the brave, where we
the integrated Mississippi BrownWright, who was an have to sleep with our tele-
aide to another prominent phones off the hooks be-
Freedom Democrat, said cause our lives be threat-
Thursday. ened daily, because we
In a televised appearance want to live as decent hu-
that drew international at- man beings, in America?”
tention, Hamer told the Other white delegations
committee that she and from the South threatened
other black women were to leave if the regular Mis-
returning from citizenship sissippi delegation was un-
training in South Carolina seated.
in 1963 when they were Freedom Democrats re-
pulled off a bus in Winona, jected what they consid-
Mississippi, and taken into ered an inadequate offer
a jail. of two nonvoting seats at
She said a white highway the convention.
patrolman told her, “’We Hamer and other activ-
are going to make you ists spent the next several
wish you was dead,’” and years working to register