Fannie Lou Hamer, American civil rights leader, at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964. Library of Congress.
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Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of 20 siblings. Her parents were sharecroppers in Mississippi. After going to a civil rights meeting led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she became involved with SNCC. She helped formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to fight against the racism and discrimination in the Mississippi Democratic Party. She helped organize the Freedom Summer, which organized many blacks in the South to register to vote. She also created a lot of programs, such as Freedom Farm Cooperative that bought land and gave them to blacks to farm collectively. She did a lot of organizing work that ranged from political to economic.
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