Fannie Lou Hamer was part of a share cropping family when SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) was going door to door in the south letting black people know they had the right to vote.
This was news to Hamer. Not only did she fight for the right to vote for herself, she went on to be a powerful figure in the Civil Rights Movement - despite being jailed and severely beaten for voting. She and her family were evicted from the farm, their home, where they did share-cropping (neo-slavery) as a result.
But I didn't know about this:
While having surgery to remove a tumor, in 1961 Hamer was given a hysterectomy without her consent by a white doctor as a part of the state of Mississippi’s plan to reduce the number of poor blacks in the state.
Hamer is also credited with coining the phrase “Mississippi appendectomy” as a euphemism for the involuntary or uninformed sterilization of black women, common in the South in the 1960s. The Hamers later raised two impoverished girls, who they later decided to adopt...
https://blackdoctor.org/485190/fannie-lou-hamer-did-something-about-being-sick-tired/
A Sliver of Hamer's Freedom Summer Speech
President Lyndon B Johnson scheduled a press conference to block her speech -- which made her an even bigger story. News outlets replayed and replayed and replayed her speech for days.
FANNIE LOU HAMER BIOGRAPHY
Every time I think I've heard how much like slavery Jim Crow was, I hear something more. Share Croppers weren't allowed to leave the plantation in the 1950s and 1960s without the white plantation owner's permission.
In the movie THE HELP I found out that white women practically owned their maids. A black woman could not quit a job where the people weren't paying as agreed and go work in another home. If she applied for a new job at a new big white home, Miss Anne would say, "Aren't you Miss Jessica's girl?" It was like Miss Jessica owned the black woman. And Miss Jessica kinda did.
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