Today we’re celebrating:
Voting and women’s rights activist, civil organizer, Civil Rights Movement Leader (1917 – 1977)
- Became a voting rights activist after she attempted to vote in Mississippi in 1962 while working as a sharecropper
- While trying to register and vote, Hamer was extorted, threatened, harassed, shot at, and assaulted by police and white supremacists
- Founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
- Gained national attention during the 1964 Democratic National Convention when the MFDP insisted on being seated with the all-white delegation