Fannie Lou Hamer: Civil Rights Activist

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States refers to a set of events and reform movements in that country aimed at bringing to an end public and private acts of racial discrimination and racism against African Americans between 1954 to 1968, Whenever the civil rights is brought up there are names that almost always come to mind like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks. But there are others both black and white that participated in the movement. That are not as famous or not mentioned in history but played a major part in the movement.

"If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question American. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hook because of our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?" Fannie Lou Hammer before the Democratic National Convention, 1964. Fannie Lou Hamer is best known for her involvement in the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC). The SNCC was at the head of the American voter registration drives of the 1960's. Hamer was a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP), which ultimately succeeded in electing many blacks to national office in the state of Mississippi.

During the early 1930’s through the mid 1960’s there were many different approaches African American’s took for achieving social changes, and the Civil rights they deserved. Many great African American leader’s such as Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, and James Baldwin contributed towards the betterment of blacks living in America. Aside from individual African American leaders there was also groups that fought for black civil rights such as The Black Power Movement, Black Panthers, and Civil Rights Activist. Other events that transpired during this time period had also effected the civil rights movement in America. For instance: The altercation with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white male ultimately led to The Montgomery Bus boycott protest,

He had been arrested numerous times, beaten, and still remained a vital role in the civil rights movement. He would later be known as a member of the “Big Six”, (Vol 2, 150) consisting of Martin Luther King, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Jim Farmer, Whitney Young and himself. The injustices at the time lead to a much needed March on the nation's capital: Washington. Though Lewis’ speech seems to to be less well known as Martin Luther King’s, it was a great accomplishment for the civil rights movement. One of my favorite Lewis speech lines was “We will splinter the segregated south into a thousand pieces, and put them together in the image of god and democracy”. (Vol 2,

Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King Jr., and Langston Hughes are three well known African Americans. They all have a few similarities, but the one that really brought these three together is the fact that they all faced racism. Their experiences with the racism inspired their dream, a dream that will permanently make America, our country, the great nation it is publicized as.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a radical woman, rallied black women to help support the black man in their effort to liberate all people by organizing protest and other public demonstrations. Despite being the youngest of twenty children in a family of sharecroppers, Hamer became one of the most prominent black woman during the Civil Rights Movement. Rather than restricting herself to the house, she sought a platform to ensure that the concerns of black people were heard by mainstream America. Hamer’s candid rhetoric made it difficult for people to ignore her message. In “The Special Plight and Role of Black Women” Hamer states that black women “are organizing [themselves] now, because [they] don’t have any other choice” because of the need to bring justice to America (Hamer 398). It was no longer enough to manage the house while the black man fights for equality; black women have a duty to support the black man to bring liberation to all people. As a result, black women activists made themselves visible whether that was by organizing protests and other public demonstrations, contributing to the intellectual movement through their writing, or obtaining political power through elected seats or negotiating with

Jesse Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B DuBois are all African American leaders. All of these men were leaders in their own time and their own sense, living in different eras with different views, but they all shared common ground. All four were African Americans trying to overcome obstacles and become influential leaders in their society.

This helped to bring awareness of multiple issues in the black communities into the homes of other races, such as Michael Eric Dyson, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, and a host of others. Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, and Malcom X paved the way for those scholars, in turn those men paved the way for the next generation of activist.

Here's how PBS describes those individuals in its release promoting the film: "Radicals. Agitators. Troublemakers. Liberators. Called by many names, the abolitionists tore the nation apart in order to make a more perfect union. Men and women, black and white, Northerners and Southerners, poor and wealthy, these passionate antislavery activists fought body and soul in the most important civil rights crusade in American history. What began as a pacifist movement fueled by persuasion and prayer became a fiery and furious struggle that forever changed the nation."

The Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South is one that is well known and familiar to us all. We all know of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the charismatic preacher who was undisputedly the leader of the civil rights movement in the South. We have all also heard of Rosa Parks, the black woman who would not give up her seat in the bus and was thus arrested for it, she was the catalyst that sparked the civil rights movement. They were the famous people often mentioned in the Civil Rights Movement. However, they were not the only people engaged in the Civil Rights Movement, there were many more, and their stories are just as important as that of Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. That reason

Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, many leaders emerged that captured the attention of the American public. During this period, the leaders' used different tactics in order to achieve change. Of two of the better-known leaders, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the latter had a more positive influence in the progress of the movement.

“The only tired I was, was tired of giving in” (Parks). I was tired, tired of being oppressed, and tired of being stepped on by the law, and my fellow people. That was the only tired i felt. The Montgomery Bus protest sparked a fire that would be felt throughout the entire country, and it was the spark that ignited the fire of the civil rights movement that shook the world. The boycott was the first of it, once light was shown on the problem, she began travelling cross country spreading information about civil rights, and sparking more peaceful protest. Rosa Parks was an important figure that changed the direction of the United States of America. She was trying to get home from work that day, but she turned into an icon for the civil rights movement, and shined a light on the unfair treatment of african americans.

During the course of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, there were several black and white supporters who had brave roles. The most prominent and persistent activist of African American rights movement was Martin Luther King Jr. King’s ideas sparked the ideal perspective of equality. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for equality by organizing marches, giving powerful speeches, and staying positive through adversity.

Perhaps, the most well known of these was Martin Luther King Jr. MLK was about gaining equality and human rights for African Americans, but doing so in a peaceful way; that’s why so many people admired him and what he preached. He led many campaigns throughout much of the 1960’s which began to slowly gain results. One of the major things MLK and his followers were campaigning for was a civil rights bill to be passed. Many walks, rallies, and protests were held in order to get then president, John F. Kennedy, to propose the bill and have it pass. In the year of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama the climax of the civil rights campaign was reached, forcing JFK to commit to proposing a civil rights bill. However, because of how big and radical this campaign was, MLK was arrested and made to spend the night in a Birmingham jail. There he wrote a letter in response to an advertisement from white clergy asking him to shut down the campaign. In the letter, MLK explains why African Americans were campaigning for this and that they wouldn’t stop until they achieved what they had been working so diligently for (13). As a result of the campaign in Birmingham and the letter MLK had written, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. The act banned public and private discrimination against African Americans and any other racial, ethnic or minority group. It also banned excluding someone from a job or a public

As a toddler, Aretha 's family moved to Detroit where she 'd spend all of her childhood. At the tender age of six, her parents separated and decided her and her siblings would stay with her father. Her mother moved to Buffalo to live with her parents. Every