This Little Light Of Mine: The Life Of Fannie Lou Hamer

Give light and people will find the way, Said Ella Baker. She was a woman, who even in the darkest hour, gave light to people everywhere. Being a Civil Rights activist in the 1930’s, she was one of the leading figures in the Civil Rights Movement. She dedicated her life to fighting for freedom and equality, and she deserves to be recognized worldwide.

She was a well respected woman that many thought was going to lead woman in the fight for equal rights.

Probably the most re-known civil rights movement was the struggle for former slaves to attain freedom. Among these slaves was one who not only freed herself, but also freed a numerous amount of other slaves that she encountered. This woman is known to us all as Harriet Tubman, but was known by the slaves as a “saint” who helped them get their freedom. As said by Richard in Black Boy, “My life as a Negro in America had led me to feel...that the problem of humanity was more important than bread, more important than physical living itself; for I felt that without a common

Ida B. Wells, an African-American woman, and feminist, shaped the image of empowerment and citizenship during post-reconstruction times. The essays, books, and newspaper articles she wrote, instigated the dialogue of race struggles between whites and blacks, while her personal narratives, including two diaries, a travel journal, and an autobiography, recorded the personal struggle of a woman to define womanhood during post-emancipation America. The novel, _THEY SAY: IDA B. WELLS AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RACE_ , provides an insight into how Ida B. Wells's life paralleled that of

Guilt and lack of empowerment can cause people to stand up for what they believe in. Florence Kelley, a successful social worker delivered a speech in 1905 for the National American Woman Suffrage Association at Philadelphia. Passionately and pointedly, Kelley persuades her audience that if women were allowed to vote, then child labor laws could be fixed.

Susan Brownell Anthony was a magnificent women who devoted most of her life to gain the right for women to vote. She traveled the United States by stage coach, wagon, and train giving many speeches, up to 75 to 100 a year, for 45 years. She went as far as writing a newspaper, the Revolution, and casting a ballot, despite it being illegal.

Rights movement. She was willing to go the distance to get the equal rights she felt was owed to

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

There were many influential leaders in the early civil rights moments, but Lugenia Burns Hope stands out from most. She did was for the greater good and worked to improve conditions for all people. Hope worked to end the convict lease system, supported prison reform, backed women’s suffrage, and Temperance. Additionally, she was for improvements in public education, child labor laws, and focused on improving conditions for the poor/ lower middle class. Lugenia Burns Hope should be honored because she challenged the Bourbons (the current white supremacist controlling group of Georgia), she became the first women United States senator, and greatest of all, helped to begin the Populist Movement in Georgia to make a change in the South. In conclusion,

Abe Louise, goes onto about Race and being an anti-racist she wants to convey and even says when a person with economic power handles the stories of impoverished people, I believe there are some ground rules. She wants simply “telling their story” for no financial gain or media attention like McDaniel’s. At the end Abe Louise Young connects with a woman featured in McDaniel’s poems named Antoinette her childhood and her story, the line that struck through this whole essay is “He used my life without giving me no credit”. This essay isn’t just about Hurricane Katrina it’s about the lives and the stories from that day, no matter what color of your skin or your walk of life, everyone had a story from that day there was an appropriate way for it to be handled, a lot of the individuals never will see a dime or any help and to Abe Louise Young she believes that the stories matter not the personal gain in the

Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6,1917,in Montgomery Country,Mississippi. She was the youngest of twelve children.She was the daughter of sharecroppers or otherwise farmers. In the summer of 1962, Hamer made a life-changing decision to attend a protest meeting. She met civil rights activists there who were there to encourage other African Americans to register to vote. She dedicated her life to fight for civil rights,working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.The organization was to help others get their right to vote and fight for injustice in the South.Sadly people didn't agree with the activist were fight for. During Hamer activist career,she was threatened,arrested,beaten,,shot and was put in jail for something she believed in.Even after all she had to go through,she still did something she believed in because she and others fought want the believed in.In 1976,Hamer was diagnosed with breast cancer,but it didn't stop her one bit.She sadly died in 1977.

To combat the problems of social inequality she had observed in U.S. society, in 1889 Jane Addams founded Hull-House, a progressive settlement house in Chicago. Hull-House was based on a European settlement house, Toynbee Hall, in London's East End, which she had visited in 1888. The next year, she leased and moved in a large home built by Charles Hull in Chicago. She publicized Hull-House and her causes by lecturing and writing. In addition to making speeches about the needs of the neighborhood, she published an autobiography 20 Years at Hull-House (1910), which asserted that society should respect the values of immigrants and assist them in adjusting to life in the U.S.

For my enrichment assignment I chose to go to the 13th annual Fannie Lou Hamer Symposium. This even took place on October 11th in the PAC. The theme of the event this year was Civil Rights Then and Now: Miles to Go Before We Sleep. This event was a lot different then I thought it was going to be but I ended up enjoying myself a lot. They started off by welcoming everyone and showing us a video of who Fannie Lou Hamer was so we can get a better idea of her background. Fannie Lou Hammer was a civil rights activist who was born on October 6th, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the youngest of twenty children. She also was a American voting rights activist and a philanthropist. She became the vice- chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which she

While traveling to Nashville she decided to treat herself to a first class train ticket. Once she got onto the train, the conductor along with security tried forcing her out of her seat and into the African-American car of the train. She attempted to refuse but eventually had to move. This was the start to her Civil Rights Movement drive. Another situation that added to her passion of the Civil Rights movement was the condition of the school that she had previously worked in. It was an all black school and the condition was absolutely terrible. Due to her thoughts on this being shared in the paper, she was fired from her job at that school.

In the 1940’s and the 1950’s, America was going through a world war and several difficulties that included problems in civil and woman rights on the home-front. In two different nonfiction memoirs by female authors, we see different yet similarities in the novels. Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone is a memoir by a Japanese-American woman, in which she describes her childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood while growing up in a Japanese immigrant family in Seattle, Washington in the 1930 's. In the second narrative, Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody is a memoir by an African-American woman whom writes about her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood life and growing up in her home state during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s. Moody and Sone had childhoods that lacked positive influences in certain areas and tell their stories to help others in understanding the issues that surrounded them as being minority women in a society that don’t accept them.