A hero for all time

Fannie Lou Hamer's message, determination still inspires

One day past the November election that would return Donald Trump to the Oval Office, I woke up thinking about Fannie Lou Hamer. I started writing this column then, but I put it aside, questioning its relevance.

But the idea stayed with me, and ultimately I decided that Hamer is always relevant, so here it is.

Fannie Lou Hamer was easy to underestimate. She was a Black sharecropper who had just a few years of formal education. When she was in her 40s, while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor, the white doctor also performed a hysterectomy on Hamer without her consent. In Mississippi at that time, forced sterilization of Black women to reduce the Black population was so outrageously common it was referred to, sarcastically, as a “Mississippi appendectomy.” That this was done on her infuriated and galvanized Hamer. She began to speak out against the considerable injustices she saw in that state during that era. Those injustices were many, and for Black people, terrifying.

Despite the danger, she became a Civil Rights leader. Her moral compass was always true. Hamer wanted to vote and she began to try to register. She tried to get others registered, too. Just for attempting to register, she was fired and her family was evicted from the plantation where they picked cotton. When she refused to give up her activities, local law enforcement beat her so badly that it affected her health for the rest of her life.

Her question was simple: Is this America?

But Hamer kept going. She organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. At the 1964 Democratic convention, she challenged the all-white, pro-segregation Democratic Party that dominated the state and was poised to nominate Lyndon Johnson as president. She demanded to have a voice. She told her moving personal story on national television. Her stirring speech was carried by all the networks at that time. Here is that speech. It is eight minutes long and well worth listening to; it still gives me chills.

Statue of Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville, Mississippi

Hamer asked a basic question at the end of her speech: She asked “Is this America?” She said it for all the oppression that she and so many others faced, but the question is relevant in every era, which is why I am writing this column.

I thought about that question when Trump, a narcissist and a bully, whose first instinct is to lie, demean others and attack, who puts his own desires ahead of the country’s good, was, despite all that, elected for a second term.

Maybe I wasn’t alone in thinking about Hamer, because Jan. 7, in the waning days of President Joe Biden’s term, he awarded this hero a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. Good for him.

For we will need examples like Hamer in the coming four years. Because already, signs are that we are entering a time in which we will all have to work to strengthen democracy. Many of Trump’s nominees were chosen for loyalty and willingness to deliver retribution, not for real qualifications. Trump wants to make Canada the “51st state”; despite his insults, our northern neighbor has sent helicopters and scores of firefighters to help put out the terrible fires in California. He’s threatened to deport a million immigrants, and to pardon the January 6 rioters who injured 140 policemen and trashed and defaced the Capitol. He wants to buy Greenland or, dear God, take it by force.

All this, before he takes the oath.

I have tried since November to keep Trump out of my head and concentrate instead on the beauty of midnight snowfalls, the joy of seeing my granddaughters, the peace I feel during cold, crisp mornings walking our dogs. I don’t want this flawed man to become like some sort of brain-devouring amoeba, living rent-free in my own mind. There is too much life to be lived.

But I am going to speak out as much as I can against the wrongs I see. I hope everyone who feels the same way I do would just pick one vital issue to work on in some way. Just one thing to help others that you feel is really important. Then work on it for the next four years. If enough people do that, no matter what, the world will be better at the end of Trump’s term in office.

A dozen years ago, long before Hamer got her deserved Presidential Medal of Freedom, a statue was dedicated to her in Ruleville, Mississippi, where she had lived and died at the age of 60, in 1977. There are markers to her life and her courage in Binghamton, New York; Atlantic City, New Jersey, where there is also a statue to her; and Indianola, Mississippi. A middle school in the Bronx is also named in her honor.

I love that she is still remembered. And, honestly, I love that she was about my size in height. It’s why my favorite quote from her is this one:

“If I fall, I’ll fall 5 feet 4 inches forward in the fight for freedom….I’m not backing off.”

We shouldn’t either.