Plog Number 270
Fannie Lou Hamer
Hello Ploggers, how are you. As we get closer to the November Election, I feel that we will see lots of depraved behavior. Some will be more debasing than others. I made a Tik Tok about Tim Scott and his shameless pandering to President 45. The Tik Tok is called Mississippi Knowledge and features lessons I learned from my mother. My mother was from Mississippi and her wisdom transferred into me. I was blessed to have her and miss her every day.
Scott indirectly brought attention to a Civil Rights Heroine Fannie Lou Hamer. A woman who was far stronger than Scott is showing himself to be. Coincidentally Hamer was also from the state of Mississippi. She was a voting and women’s right community organizer. She worked to desegregate the Democratic Party. She fought to register to vote as a Black woman and helped many other fellow Black Mississipians to do the same. She also co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Additionally she worked with SNICC Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. She was co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus. She ran for US Senate in 1964 and for Mississippi State Senate in 1971. She was unsuccessful both times.
Hamer was born in 1917 as the youngest of 20 children. She was the only one to learn to read. She worked in the cotton fields to help her family. She and he family were sharecroppers. During the winters of 1924-1930 she attended the one room school provided for the sharecropper’s children. By age 13 she was able to pick between 200-300 pounds of cotton a day while living with polio.
She suffered violence and physical abuse for her activism at the hands of the police and the Ku Klux Klan. She was beaten by inmates who were forced to beat her with a baton. She suffered permanent kidney damage, a blood clot behind her eye and a permanent limp. She was repeatedly groped and had her body exposed publically. Still she went on in her struggle. She took a literacy test 3 times before passing it in order to vote. She stated “you will see me every 30 days until I pass.” Later she was still denied the vote because she lacked a receipt for the required poll tax.
Hamer had two famous sayings. Numero Uno was “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” and Numero Duo “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” The second one about being sick and tired is the one that Tim Scott co-opted. He quoted Hamer during his speech to endorse 45 for President. I am betting that he did not mean to shine newfound light onto Hamer's heroism. My guess is that he chose to use her words to make himself appear tireless in his political pursuits. He may be tired of all the work he has been doing to kiss up to President 45, hoping for a Vice Presidential invite. He may not even have known who he was quoting. But regardless, his words made me want to know more about Hamer.
I respect Hamer and her strength and her struggle. She looks like a fierce black woman who worked hard for every scap she got. She was physically abused in jail to the point where she developed a permanent limp. She died in 1977 at age 59. Interesting and tragically enough, I learned that at age 44 Hamer was having a uterine tumor removed. The surgeon, (a white male) also removed her uterus without her consent. This was a common occurrence in Mississippi as population control for poor black people. Members of the black community called the procedure a “Mississippi appendectomy”. Fannie and her husband turned to adoption and adopted 4 children. One of those daughters Dorothy Jean died at age 22 of internal hemorrhaging after she as denied admission to the local because of her mothers activism. Hamer later died of hypertension and breast cancer. Her tombstone is engraved with one of her famous quotes used by Scott last week “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired: The monstrous medical assaults against women of color have evolved into substandard care and enormous disparity today. The struggle for bodily autonomy is just as real today as in Fannie Lou Hamer’s time. Misogony is still alive and well. RECLAIM!
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