what to do to getcpeopoecto hear your story civil rights
Idue north contempo years, amidst increasing white supremacist violence and a disturbing run of mass shootings, "thoughts and prayers" have been offered again and again. They may well soothe hearts and minds. Just activists have also pushed back confronting the idea that they provide any solution.
That same idea was powerfully articulated more than half a century ago by Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights activist born on October. half dozen, 1917.
"You can pray until y'all faint, just if you don't go upward and try to do something, God is non going to put information technology in your lap." With characteristic aplomb, Hamer delivered these powerful words at a mass meeting in Indianola, Miss., in September 1964.
Hamer'southward bold message—that each of us has the responsibility to work toward the just and equal society we envision—left a lasting impression on those in attendance that evening at Indianola'south Negro Baptist Church. The fact that Hamer would tell a room filled with religious people that prayer but went and so far revealed the depth of her fearless activism.
A adult female of faith, Hamer believed that God was on her side and favored anybody fighting for the rights and equality of black people. But she also understood that religion solitary could not bring an end to racial injustice in this state. And faith alone could not dismantle white supremacy.
Hamer's bold message to "get up and endeavour to do something" was one that all Americans committed to change needed to hear in 1964.
Hamer'south own experiences underscored this betoken. Born in Montgomery Canton, Miss., Hamer worked as a sharecropper for much of her life. Information technology was simply in her 40s, while attention a mass meeting at a local church, that she first became aware that black people had been granted voting rights by the U.S. constitution. "I had never heard, until 1962, that black people could register and vote," she after explained. During the early 1960s, she became a civil rights activist, working alongside members of the Educatee Irenic Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—an interracial civil rights organization—in the Mississippi Delta. She became a SNCC Field Secretary in 1963 and traveled around the land speaking and registering people to vote.
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In April 1964, Hamer joined forces with other activists in the state to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Despite the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments during the 19th century, merely five per centum of Mississippi's 450,000 Black residents were registered to vote in 1963. Hamer and fellow MFDP activists set out to ensure greater black representation in the state's Democratic Party. They were also determined to expand voter registration by making black people enlightened of their rights as citizens of the United States.
White supremacists in Mississippi had done everything in their power to cake black people from exercising their right to vote, from the creation of poll taxes and literacy tests to rampant acts of violence, terror and intimidation. When Hamer became aware of her constitutional rights, she was determined to use them. But fifty-fifty more, she wanted to ensure that others would also benefit from this knowledge. During the early 1960s, Hamer volunteered to assist SNCC activists with voter registration—ignoring the threats of violence from white supremacists in her community. "The merely thing they could practice to me was to kill me," she noted, "and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time e'er since I could call up."
In a fiery voice communication at the DNC in Atlantic City on Aug. 22, 1964, Hamer recounted the many times white supremacists targeted her life—and the lives of those she loved—simply because of her determination to exercise her voting rights. She spoke of the brutal beating she endured at the hands of police officers in 1963, when she and other traveling activists made a finish in Winona, Miss., simply to grab a bite to eat. She also painfully recounted the night white supremacists in Ruleville, Miss., sprayed 16 bullets into the house where she resided with friends—bullets meant peculiarly for her.
And yet there Hamer stood in September 1964 at a mass meeting in Indianola—undeterred and committed to the fight for equality as ever before. She encouraged attendees to do their correct to vote and not to sit down idly by in the face of injustice. She understood the challenges ahead and she empathized with the fright, and even hopelessness, many felt that evening—and still feel today. The fight for equality seems never-ending and the roadblocks are many, simply Hamer'due south words offer much-needed guidance, direction and determination: faith without action is dead.
Historians' perspectives on how the past informs the present
Keisha N. Blain is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and President of the African American Intellectual History Social club (AAIHS). She is the author of Fix the World on Burn: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom.
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Source: https://time.com/5692775/fannie-lou-hamer/
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