You Think You are Sick and Tired of Activism? Civil Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hamer Never Gave Up

What a privilege to have seen Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, Seattle Rep’s first show post pandemic. Cheryl L. West created an extraordinary stage experience to celebrate grassroots activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Using the musicality of her speeches and civil rights songs played by an onstage band, we are woven into the astonishing details of her life by E. Faye Butler, as Fannie.

While parts of Fannie Lou Hamer’s story bring tears, this short but powerful show brings her energy and force of personality through to the audience. West captures the spoken and sung prayer style that Fannie Lou Hamer so effectively used when she addressed the public. We often feel as though we are at a revival meeting, singing and clapping after we dry our tears. We are also left wondering if we are doing enough as we recognize that this is not “history” that we are viewing on stage, these are current events. And we are compelled to ask, as did Fannie Lou Hamer ask in her testimony before the 1964 Democratic Credentialing Committee: Is this the America, the land of the free and the home of the brave…we want to live in as decent human beings?

Born in Mississippi in 1917, Fannie Lou Townsend is the 20th and youngest child of parents, Lou Ella and James, who were sharecroppers. Fannie leaves school at the age of 12 and works full time. She marries Perry Hamer, a fellow plantation worker in 1944. Fannie has her uterus removed without her permission in 1961 and eventually adopts four children.

In 1962, Fannie began her fight for black voters’ rights. She tried to register to vote but was not able to pass the literacy test...she’d worked as a timekeeper on the plantation for 18 years because she was the only person who could read and write. This literacy test could take ludicrous forms such as 95 questions including: Who was the governor of Mississippi in 1922; or the demand to recite a particular part of the Mississippi Constitution randomly drawn from a cigar box. Fannie was told to copy and interpret the section of the Mississippi Constitution that deals with de facto laws.

When Fannie returned from her failed attempt to register, she was fired from her job on the plantation. She said, “They kicked me off the plantation, they set me free. It’s the best thing that could happen. Now I can work for my people.” Unable to find work, the Hamers lived on Fannie’s $10.00 a month stipend from her work for SNCC.

After she takes the voter registration test for the third time, she passes but continues to face obstacles when she tries to vote. What follows in her life is an incredible list of activism and trauma including being threatened, shot at, being beaten in jail in Winona, Mississippi to such an extent that she never fully recovers (she is left almost blind in one eye and with kidney damage). This does not stop her from helping to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which demands seats at the 1964 Presidential Convention. At that time Mississippi had a 45% African American population, with less that 5% registered to vote and not one African American delegate. Fannie Lou Hamer not only goes to the Convention, but she gives a televised speech which questions America as “the land of the free”.

She then goes on to march with Martin Luther King, run the for the Mississippi Senate, found the Freedom Farm Cooperative which tried to redistribute economic power in agriculture (as well as build low-income housing for those who wanted to farm in the cooperative), co-found the National Women’s Political Caucus, to name just some of her achievements. She was involved in the grassroots activities that are the precursors to these achievements and more.

In 1972, Fannie Lou is hospitalized for nervous exhaustion. She dies in 1977 from breast cancer at just 59 years old.

I may have the privilege but not certainly the right to be “sick and tired of being sick and tired” as Fannie Lou Hamer described herself. Join me and Seattle NOW…to continue the struggle to keep voting rights accessible for all in OUR America. www.nowseattle.org

View this short trailer for an intro to Fannie at the Seattle Rep including live footage of her testimony before the Democratic Convention Credentialing Committee. 

While this show is no longer available in the Seattle area, I am including a link to E. Faye Butler’s website which indicates that there will be future performances. Stay tuned…this is one you don’t want to miss: www.e-fayebutler.com