Fannie Lou Hamer: Courage and Faith

In August 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer attended a meeting held by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi. The following year, involvement in voter registration efforts left her and others jailed and brutally beaten. Hamer recalls that “The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember.” Fannie Lou Hamer: Courage and Faith highlights Hamer’s personal sacrifice in the struggle for voters’ rights and equality, and looks at the current generation of political activists whom Hamer has inspired.

Hamer came to national prominence in 1964 with her dramatic testimony at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Her words shed light on voting discrimination in Mississippi and challenged the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation. Fannie Lou Hamer: Courage and Faith includes archival footage as well as emotional interviews from former members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

Fannie Lou Hamer’s accomplishments are remembered in interviews with key members of the civil rights movement, such as U.S. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is now in her seventh term as the representative for the District of Columbia. Named by President Jimmy Carter as the first woman to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Norton came to Congress as a national figure, civil rights and feminist leader, tenured professor of law and board member of three Fortune 500 companies. She has been identified as one of the 100 most important American women and one of the most powerful women in Washington.

“Young people today do not need to engage in hero worship of Fannie Lou Hamer. She would not have appreciated that. And I knew her well to the day she died,” states Representative Holmes Norton. “They need to ask themselves can I really admire Fannie Lou Hamer if I have not registered to vote. Because Fannie Lou Hamer tried three times before she registered to vote. She was thrown off the plantation because she registered to vote and was beat in jail because she registered to vote. So the first thing that you have to do if you admire Fannie Lou Hamer is register to vote and then get yourself there on Election Day.”

Fannie Lou Hamer: Courage and Faith was awarded the 2005 Unity Award in Media. The documentary is narrated by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the award-winning female a cappella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Thursday February 2, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 6:30 pm