Times have been far worse. Yet from that past more than mere shadows survive and thrive, and spread farther than tribe. In her day, Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper with a 6-grade-education, acquitted herself for kin and country far better than we have. Hamer left a legacy we in our day seem unprepared to take and push farther forward.
On Capitol Hill and Mississippi voting rights USA, this is how it was Hamer’s day.
The year was 1965. The U.S. president was Lyndon Baines Johnson (D-Texas), vice president was Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.); Speaker of the House John William McCormack (D-Mass.), Majority Leader Carl Albert (D-Okla.), Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich. The 89th Congress had convened January 4, 1965.
What the Democratic Party had refused to do, Congress was being asked to do ─ unseat white politicians. Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine and Victoria Gray representing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the seating in the House of Representatives of five white men from Mississippi. The Freedom Democrats said, “Since black Mississippians were effectively denied the vote, the election of the five congressmen in the fall of 1964 was illegal.”
“Under the MFDP strategy, once the Speaker of the House was sworn in on the opening day of Congress [January 4, 1965], a member of the House would get the speaker’s attention just before the rest of the representatives rose to be sworn. He would challenge seating the Mississippians; those members challenged would have to stand aside while the rest where sworn in.” New York Congressman William Fitts Ryan representing Manhattan’s Upper Wide rose:
“‘Mr. Speaker, on my responsibility as a Member-elect of the 89th Congress, I object to the oath being administered to the gentlemen from Mississippi [Democrats Thomas G. Abernathy, Jamie L. Whitten, John Bell Williams, and William Colmer, and Republican Prentiss Walker]. I base this upon facts and statements I consider reliable. I also make this objection on behalf of a significant number of colleagues who are now standing with me.’“There was literally a groundswell. About seventy members stood with Ryan.” The mission was accomplished for a few moments; but the challenged members were sworn in despite extensive evidence of the terrorizing of potential voters, registrants, and people attempting to register to vote.
Ryan pushed on, reminding the House that “‘the terror, violence and murder perpetrated [in the summer of 1964] upon those who attempted to help their fellow citizens exercise their right to vote focused national attention upon the fact that Mississippi tramples upon the U.S. Constitution by denying American citizens the right to vote.’ He restated Mississippi’s legislative steps to control black voting and observed that ‘laws are apparently not enough: for there are also economic reprisals, threats, intimidation and violence,’ not only toward blacks who try to vote but also toward their white allies. ‘According to the Justice Department in McComb, Mississippi, alone, there were, from June to October 1964, 17 bombings of churches, homes and businesses; 32 arrests; 9 beatings; and 4 church burnings as a result of voter registration and civil rights activity.’… The Justice Department had sued twenty-seven of Mississippi’s 82 counties. In seven cases, courts had found a pattern or practice of discrimination.
On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. This measure suspended literacy tests and other discriminatory registration practices; directed the Justice Department to file suits to strike down poll taxes; provided that federal examiners be sent to help sign up voters in many southern counties; and required that changes in voter laws in many states be cleared through the Justice Department before taking effect.… Legitimate means of preventing future injustices were now in place but members of Congress were unwilling to correct the illegalities of the pas [as] … they, too, might be held accountable.” President Johnson sent mixed signals.
The congressional challenge was still at issue and unresolved. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party stepped up pressure for action on the challenge. A hearing was set for room H-329 of the Capitol. The hearing began on Monday morning, September 13, 1965. Testifying before the committee were co-founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party: Annie Devine, Victoria Gray, and Fannie Lou Hamer. Here is some of what Fannie Lou Hamer had to say.
“‘I am standing here today suffering with a permanent kidney injury and a blood clot in the artery of my the left eye from a beating I got inside of the jail in Winona, Mississippi, because I was participating in voter registration. A county deputy, a state highway patrol ordered [the attack]. I want to say something else. When we go back home from this meeting here today, we stand a chance of being shot down, or either blown to bits in the state of Mississippi. …
“‘You gentlemen should know that the Negroes make up 58 percent of the potential voters of the Second Congressional District. This means that if Negroes were allowed to vote freely, I could be sitting up here with you right now as a Congresswoman.’“Mrs. Hamer said that federal examiners had just been sent to Leflore County, where Greenwood is located. In just a few weeks, more than three thousand blacks had registered to vote, reflecting ‘the eagerness of the Mississippi Negro to participate in the elective process’ ─ but Mississippi was retaliating through lawsuits to try to keep newly registered voters off the rolls and through renewed violence and threats.
“‘Sweeping this challenge under the rug now and dismissing this challenge, I think would be wrong for the whole country because it is time for the American people to wake up. All we want is a chance to participate in the government of Mississippi.’
“With all the violence and people killed, [Hamer] added, not one had been convicted for these crimes and no one had served any prison time for them.
“‘It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country, where I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi? I am not saying that Mr. Whitten [Jamie Whitten, a major power in the House of Representatives who, at the time, had held office since 1941] or the other congressmen helped in that, but I am saying that they know this is going on. … I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of helping set the Negro free in Mississippi.’”
After the debate and vote on the congressional challenge, Fannie Lou Hamer spoke outside the hearing room before returning to her home state. “‘I’m not crying for myself today but I’m crying for America. I cry that the Constitution of the United States, written down on paper, applies only to white people. We will come back year after year until we are allowed our rights as citizens…
“‘It ain’t over yet. We’re coming back here, again, and again, and again… We showed them we’re for real, and now we have to build solidly in the state… take the challenge right to them in Sunflower County elections this November.’”
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was among America’s stalwart rights activists. In her lifetime, she had been a sharecropper, voting rights activist, voter registrant in the Deep South, field worker for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), orator, and political activist.
Sources and notes
This Little Light of Mine: the Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, Kay Mills, Dutton, 1993, 90-171
Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Hine, Brown and Terborg-Penn eds., Indiana University Press, 1993
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