Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She had a family that were slaves and was the youngest of twenty siblings. Her mother and Father were sharecroppers. She was forced to drop out of school at age twelve to help support her family. She married a sharecropper named Perry “Pap” Hamer.

Fannie Lou decided that she wasn’t going to sharecrop anymore. Fannie Lou and seventeen others boarded a bus and road it to the Courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi to register to vote. As the group was riding, a policeman pulled them over and informed them that their bus was transporting the wrong skin color. He arrested them and put them in prison because of their skin color being black.

When the police released Fannie Lou, the plantation owner from where she had earlier worked in her lifetime came to visit her. He told her to get off his land and never come back onto his land again. If she wanted to vote, he said she definitely had to stay away from his land and anywhere near it. Ten days after he visited her, the house where she was currently staying was shot at by sixteen bullets. No one was hurt though.

Fannie Lou started to work on welfare and voter registration programs for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. As she was riding a bus trying to help out with the two organizations, a policeman pulled the bus over. He pulled them over because, the bus was transporting African Americans. He took her and the other riders to prison and beat them. They left them bleeding in their jail cells.

In 1964, right before the election, she joined the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She and others went to Atlantic City, New Jersey to challenge the all-white group. There usually weren’t any African Americans voting because, it was illegal. Fannie Lou talked to the Credentials Committee about the all-white group. They reached an agreement which gave the right to vote and speak to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

A year later, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Before Fannie Lou’s death in 1977, she was chosen as an honorary member in the Delta Theta Sorority.

Fannie Lou Hamer was important because, she helped with the Voting Rights Act. She helped reach the comprise that later turned into the Voting Rights Act. She also helped with making it legal for African Americans to vote.

"Fannie Lou Hamer." (2007) 12 Feb