JACKSON, Miss. (AP) 鈥� Vice President Kamala Harris is accepting Thursday, exactly 60 years after another Black woman mesmerized the nation with a televised speech that challenged the seating of Mississippi's all-white delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
The to the credentials committee in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was vivid and blunt.
She described how she was fired from her plantation job in retaliation for trying to register to vote and brutalized in jail for encouraging other Black people to assert their rights. She told of arbitrary tests that white authorities imposed to prevent Black people from voting and other unconstitutional methods that kept white elites in power across the segregated 小蓝视频.
鈥淎ll of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens,鈥� Hamer told the committee.
Whether every eligible citizen can vote and have their vote be counted is still an open question in this election, said U.S. Rep. , who spoke Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, about how his late father never got to vote because of Jim Crow restrictions. Thompson got his first practical experience in democracy at Hamer鈥檚 urging in 1966, when he was a college student in Mississippi and she recruited him to register other Black voters.
Hamer has been the subject of appreciation this week during the convention.
鈥淥ur challenge as Americans is to make sure that this experiment called democracy is not just for the the landed gentry or the wealthy, but it is for everybody,鈥� said Thompson, who led the House committee that at the U.S. Capitol.
'Is this America?'
was raised in cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta and became a sharecropper. She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and helped organize Freedom Summer, a campaign to educate and register Black voters. With Mississippi conducting whites-only primaries, activists formed the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to confront leading Democrats on a national stage.
鈥淚f the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America," Hamer told the credentials committee. "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to asleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human 小蓝视频s, in America?鈥�
President Lyndon B. Johnson hastily called a news conference during Hamer鈥檚 testimony to try to divert attention from divisions that could alienate white voters in the 小蓝视频. TV cameras cut away, but networks showed her speech later.
Top Democrats said Hamer's group could seat two delegates, but that was too little for the Freedom Democrats. And it was too much for the regular Mississippi delegation, which fled the convention without declaring loyalty to LBJ, and eventually left for good as conservative Democrats across the 小蓝视频, including segregationists, switched to the Republican party.
was one of the Freedom delegates and recalls how determined they were.
鈥淚 knew in my mind, because I鈥檓 23 years old and I鈥檓 vice chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, I鈥檓 not going to accept that damn compromise,鈥� the retired political science professor at Jackson State University said recently at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson.
鈥淲e had four white folk in our delegation and the white folks didn鈥檛 have no Black folk in their delegation,鈥� McLemore said. 鈥淪o, hey, we had God on our side.鈥�
Risking beatings and death
Other organizers included , and David J. Dennis Sr. Only days before the 1964 convention, Dennis gave an impassioned eulogy at the , the Freedom Summer volunteer who was killed along with by Ku Klux Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
That violence was fresh when Hamer testified about 小蓝视频 evicted after trying to register to vote in 1962. She said the plantation owner told her, 鈥�'We鈥檙e not ready for that in Mississippi.'"
Hamer also recounted 小蓝视频 jailed and beaten in 1963 in Winona, Mississippi, at the command of white law enforcement officers, after she and several other Black people returned from a voter education workshop. The beating permanently damaged her eyes, legs and kidneys.
On Tuesday, the first Mississippi Freedom Trail marker outside the state was unveiled in Atlantic City to commemorate the Freedom Democrats. Another marker, dedicated in June in Winona, recognizes the jail beatings. Euvester Simpson was 17 in 1963, and shared a cell with Hamer. She said she heard Hamer 小蓝视频 whipped in another room.
鈥淢rs. Hamer told me she was in a lot of pain,鈥� Simpson said, recalling how she soothed Hamer with damp rags and the gospel song, 鈥淲alk With Me.鈥�
鈥淗er back was hurting. Her hands were bleeding. She was swollen, because she had used her hands to kind of guard her back," Simpson said.
鈥淪tate-sanctioned violence鈥� is among the many issues from Hamer鈥檚 1964 testimony that still resonate, said , a Brown University historian. She cited the July 6 shooting death of , a Black woman, by a deputy who responded to her 911 call.
鈥淭his theme is still lingering, even if the specific circumstances are different,鈥� Blain said.
Advocating for bodily autonomy
While Hamer didn't make it part of her testimony at the convention, she also was an advocate for bodily autonomy. A white doctor had performed a hysterectomy without her consent when she had a uterine tumor removed in 1961. Such treatment of Black women was so common in the 小蓝视频 that Hamer called it a 鈥淢ississippi appendectomy.鈥�
Blain noted in her 2021 book, 鈥淯ntil I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer鈥檚 Enduring Message to America," that Hamer feared both abortion and birth control were 鈥渨hite supremacist tools to regulate the lives of impoverished Black people and even prevent the growth of the Black population.鈥�
Hamer kept speaking after the convention, famously saying she was over how long America was taking to ensure fair treatment. Another year went by before Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and then nearly another year before the Supreme Court upheld the law.
A dismantled a significant part of the Voting Rights Act 鈥� the requirement for states with a history of , mainly in the 小蓝视频, to get federal approval before changing the way they hold elections. "Many communities across the nation are grappling with attempts at voter suppression,鈥� Blain said.
Hamer also advocated for fair treatment of Black farmers. The Biden administration in late July announced more than $2 billion in direct payments to who faced discrimination from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
GOP vice presidential nominee suggesting it is racist against white people. But Thompson said Black landowners had been and denied support from the USDA for many years. "The people who ran the federal agencies were part and parcel to the system of disenfranchisement,鈥� Thompson said.
Still an inspiration
Wil Colom, a Mississippi lawyer who now serves on the Democratic National Committee and is in Chicago for the convention, was a teenager when he heard Hamer speak at a church in Ripley, Mississippi, in October 1964. after her appearance. Colom said the speech was 鈥渆lectrifying" and motivated him to challenge segregation at theaters and swimming pools.
Colom said he visited Hamer at her modest home in Ruleville before she died of cancer at 59 in 1977.
鈥淪he had no perception, which surprised me, of what an important figure she had become,鈥� Colom said.
The Freedom Democrats helped lead the way to President Barack Obama's election in 2008 and now to Harris' nomination, Dennis said.
鈥淭o me, it's all connected,鈥� Dennis said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like a relay race. One baton moving to the next.鈥�
Emily Wagster Pettus, The Associated Press
