With "the use and threat of violence," Mississippi was the South's "most racist and violent" state, claims an article in the Mississippi Historical Society's online publication Mississippi History Now.
"Mississippi's lawmakers, law enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens worked long and hard to maintain the segregated way of life that had dominated the state since the end of the Civil War," the article states.
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 - 1977) was a victim of that racist violence.
In 1962, at the age of 44, this wife, mother, and sharecropper attempted to register to vote. Two years later, she testified about that experience at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey:
"Mr. Chairman, ... It was the 31st of August in 1962 that 18 of us traveled 26 miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.
We was met in Indianola by policemen, highway patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test. ...
"The plantation owner [where I and my family lived] came and said, 'If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave. We're not ready for that in Mississippi.' I had to leave [my home] that same night. ...
"On the 10th of September 1962, 16 bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. The same night, two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also, Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in. ...
"And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop. ... In Winona, Mississippi, I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed, ... "Get that one there." ... When the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me. ...
"After I was placed in the cell, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, 'Can you say, yes, sir, nigger? Can you say yes, sir?' ... They beat her, I don't know how long. ...
"And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a state highway patrolman. ... And he said, 'We're going to make you wish you was dead.'
"I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The state highway patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.
"The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the state highway patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face. As I laid on my face, the first Negro began to beat me. ...
"After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the state highway patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
"The second Negro began to beat. ... I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush. ...
"All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens.
"Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"
In the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, the base of a tall statue proclaims her determination: "I'm never sure when I leave home whether I'll make it back or not ... but if I fall, I'll fall five feet and four inches forward for freedom and I'm not backing off it!"
Quote from Eyes on the Prize documentary, disc 3, program 6, "Bridge to Freedom" (1965)
"You can't keep anyone in the United States from voting without hurting the right of other citizens. Democracy is built on this."
-Rev. Cordy Tindell (C. T.) Vivian, a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a Freedom Rider
Read and listen to Fannie Lou Hamer's entire powerful and passionate testimony at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 22, 1964.
