This historic moment deserves a remembrance of the legacy set forward by voting and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Harris stands on her shoulders.
On Sunday, July 21, 2024, President Joe Biden withdrew from his bid for a second term in the White House. Amid calls for him to step aside, pundits speculated about who could or should fill the role. Speculations were vast—and some proposals not entirely constitutional: Could Barack Obama run for a third term? (The answer is no.) Others speculated about governors in key states and members of his Cabinet, including Pete Buttigieg, secretary of transportation.
Biden made history by stepping aside and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris—the first woman ever to serve in that role. If she wins the party’s nomination, she will be only the second woman in our nation’s history to clench a major party’s nomination for president. And, if elected as the next president of the United States, Kamala Harris will not only be the first woman to hold that office, but she will also be the first woman to break through centuries-old barriers that marginalized women, pressured them not to run, and questioned their abilities to govern. To do so as a Black woman marks a particularly poignant time in our nation’s history.
In Biden’s endorsement of Harris, a powerful nominee who has served in state and federal offices emerges—and groundbreaking moment in history is sealed. In her first day as a candidate for the 2024 presidency, she has already secured a majority of the delegates necessary for the Democratic nomination. She will be the nominee.
This moment in history also marks 60 years since voting and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer famously confronted the United States on its chilling legacies of racial hostility and animosity, and its horrific and confounding patterns of violence and sexism toward Black women, at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her speech was particularly powerful then and now.
Hamer’s testimony on Black voter suppression, police violence, and the desire to become “first-class citizens,” continues to resonate for too many. She described being arrested and taken to a local jail that housed men after she and a group of women attempted to vote. At that jail she was beaten by an inmate and the guard. In painful detail, she described attempting to shield her legs as she suffered from polio as a child. The punishment for her (and countless others) attempting to vote is its own tragic legacy in American history and politics.
I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me my head and told me to hush. … All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens.
Fannie Lou Hamer
Hamer’s unsettling testimony exposed ugly truths about how Black women in Southern states like Mississippi were confronted with literacy tests if they wanted to vote. Indeed, in Mississippi, Alabama and neighboring states, Black people were forced to guess how many bubbles on a bar of soap or jelly beans in a jar in order to vote—even in the 1960s.
Fannie Lou Hamer also exposed the dirty secret of Mississippi and surrounding states that coercively sterilized Black women and girls. In Sunflower County, where she lived, she noted, “Six out of the 10 Negro women that go to the hospital are sterilized.” She too was a victim of coerced sterilization. The practice was so widespread and frequently performed that the procedure came to be known as a “Mississippi appendectomy.” Because of this, she was never able to have biological children.
Decades later, Hamer’s testimony continues to resonate and instruct. Ironically, the state that challenged abortion rights in the U.S., leading to the overturning of Roe v. Wade is the same Mississippi that Hamer warned about 60 years ago.
Just last November, polling venues in Mississippi ran out of ballots, ultimately denying Black voters that waited in line for hours the ability to cast a vote. In Jackson, Miss., Black residents have had their access to tap water completely shut off. The water delivered to “this majority-Black city” is full of “dirt and sediment,” according to the NAACP.
Fannie Lou Hamer exposed the dirty secrets of a nation that had not yet fulfilled its promises of equality, freedom, privacy, liberty and voting rights. A nation where its Constitution had been repurposed for illegitimacy, including “separate but equal,” judicial interpretation. In the rolling-back of civil liberties, civil rights and reproductive freedoms, our nation remains tethered to some of the stark realities experienced by Hamer.
But this is also a moment of hope. At the time of the 1964 DNC, Hamer hoped for the seating of delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)—a multiracial coalition—in place of the so-called “Dixiecrats” that engaged in a “web of law, intimidation, official and unofficial force, and violence terrorizing Blacks seeking voting rights.” Even though Hammer’s effort came up short, her campaign and advocacy, “forced reforms in the national Democratic Party that expanded the participation of women and [people of color] going forward.”
In August, 60 years after Hamer’s famous appeal, the delegates assembled will vote and name Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president. It will be a historic moment for many reasons. Amid the anticipated and deserved celebration should also be a remembrance of the legacy set forward by Fannie Lou Hamer. Kamala Harris will be standing on her shoulders.
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