BrainPOP
  • 4 months ago
Transcript
00:00Ah, directly to jail again.
00:06Either you're cheating or this game is rigged.
00:10Fine.
00:14Dear Tim and Moby, Who was Fannie Lou Hamer?
00:18From Megan. Well, on August 22, 1964,
00:22a lot of Americans were asking that same question.
00:26That night, they turned on the TV to see Hamer on every news program.
00:30She looked like a nice, middle-aged lady, somebody's mom, or your neighbor.
00:34But in her home state of Mississippi, she was well-known as a fierce
00:38voting rights advocate. For the past two years, she'd been fighting
00:42to get African Americans access to the polls. The Constitution
00:46said that the right to vote couldn't be denied due to race.
00:50But southern states had found all sorts of ways to get around the law.
00:54Stripped of their right to vote, black southerners had no voice in a racist
00:58system. Try to fight it, and you face jail time, intimidation,
01:02and violence. Hamer had experienced it all, and that
01:06night, she shared her story. It was just a few minutes long,
01:10but full of hardship and brutality. Viewers who'd never heard
01:14of her before wept. Overnight, she went from being a local
01:18activist to a national civil rights leader.
01:22Hamer was born in Mississippi in 1917, the youngest
01:26of 20 children. Her grandmother had been enslaved,
01:30and her parents, like many descendants of enslaved people, were sharecroppers.
01:34A plantation owner rented them farmland in exchange for a share
01:38of their crops. But he also charged high rates for tools and
01:42other expenses. So, like most sharecroppers, they were constantly
01:46in debt. Fannie Lou had to leave school after sixth grade to help her
01:50family in the fields. As an adult, she
01:54earned a position of responsibility on a plantation. She recorded
01:58each farmer's harvest, and tried to get them their fair share.
02:02Then, in August 1962, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
02:06Committee, or SNCC, visited her church. All around
02:10the country, the civil rights movement was heating up, and SNCC was one
02:14of the major players. Its student activists trained local
02:18community leaders to join the fight. In Mississippi, they focused on
02:22registering black voters. They told the congregation they could sweep
02:26out racist officials. Hamer was stunned. She didn't even know
02:30she had the right to vote. When SNCC asked for volunteers to register
02:34to vote, she raised her hand high.
02:38Uh, no, it wasn't that simple. An angry crowd
02:42gathered at the courthouse to meet the 18 volunteers. They tried to
02:46scare Hamer and the others from even trying to register. But the volunteers
02:50stuck together, and made their way in. Inside the
02:54courthouse, the clerk was no more welcoming. He demanded the group
02:58pass a test before registering. They were asked to explain
03:02a legal clause about ex facto laws.
03:06Yeah, that was the whole point of literacy tests. To be nearly
03:10impossible to pass, so clerks could refuse anyone the right to vote.
03:14They could also demand a poll tax, a fee meant to discourage
03:18would-be voters. No surprise, all the SNCC volunteers
03:22failed the literacy test. On the way home, their bus
03:26was stopped by the police. They said its yellow color was illegal.
03:30Hamer sang to keep the group's spirits up until they were
03:34let go. That night, she was fired from her job and evicted
03:38from her home. The plantation owner had heard about her attempt to register.
03:42A few nights later, someone shot at the house where she was staying.
03:46Afraid for her children, Hamer considered leaving town
03:50for good. But she couldn't convince herself to leave the place her
03:54parents helped build. She rented a house from a neighbor, and took
03:58a job with SNCC. Hamer's home
04:02became a gathering place for volunteers and civil rights leaders.
04:06Among them, she stood out. She wasn't male, young,
04:10well-educated, or middle class. She knew what poor black families
04:14endured because she'd lived it. That first-hand experience
04:18made her a powerful speaker. She would often break into song to
04:22motivate crowds. Before long, she was as well-known for her
04:26singing voice as her activism. But her growing influence
04:30made her a target for racist attacks. She got threatening letters
04:34and phone calls, and her husband lost job after job.
04:38Someone even threw a bomb at her house, though luckily it failed to explode.
04:42Then, in June 1963, Hamer and
04:46six fellow activists were arrested. They'd tried to eat at a
04:50whites-only diner. Local police held them for three days,
04:54beating and torturing them. Hamer's kidneys were
04:58permanently damaged, and she lost sight in one eye.
05:02Hamer and other activists realized that local authorities weren't going
05:06to change unless they were forced to. So, in 1964,
05:10they started a massive voter registration drive called Freedom Summer.
05:14It brought hundreds of mostly white college students down to Mississippi.
05:18They went door-to-door, registering black voters.
05:22It was dangerous work. Three volunteers were murdered in the first
05:26week. The nation could no longer ignore what was happening in Mississippi.
05:30For the rest of the summer, stories of beatings and shootings
05:34made headlines around the country. Then, at the end of August,
05:38Hamer and other activists went to Atlantic City, New Jersey.
05:42That was the site of the Democratic National Convention, the big event
05:46where the party chooses its nominee for president. Each state sends a group
05:50of people to cast the official vote. And, no surprise,
05:54Mississippi's representatives were all white. Hamer's group was
05:58there to challenge their authority. Since the state excluded black
06:02voters, they said, the delegation was illegal. They were
06:06Mississippi's true representatives, and they had the voter registrations to prove it.
06:10Their protest caused an uproar, and Hamer was
06:14given a slot to speak. Before a national audience,
06:18she described what she had endured simply for trying to vote,
06:22being threatened and shot at by fellow citizens, being beaten by the police.
06:26She challenged the nation to consider its own values.
06:30Is this America, the land
06:34of the free and the home of the brave, where we have
06:38to sleep with our telephones off the hook
06:42because our lives be threatened daily
06:46because we want to live as decent human beings
06:50in America? Her testimony replayed on the news
06:54for days. Hamer and her group weren't
06:58seated at the convention. But a year later, President Lyndon Johnson
07:02would sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
07:06It outlawed all kinds of barriers to voting, like literacy tests and poll
07:10taxes. And at the convention in 1968, Hamer was
07:14chosen to be an official delegate. She received a standing ovation.
07:18Hamer's activism continued way
07:22past her primetime moment. She fought for women's rights,
07:26protested the Vietnam War, and ran for office several times.
07:30She founded Freedom Farm, a cooperative to help black farmers
07:34climb out of poverty. When she died in 1977,
07:38she was buried there.
07:42Uh, yeah, I guess it is your turn to roll.
07:46sigh
07:50sigh