With it being the year of the presidential debate, it was only right to add someone who had an effect on the reason why African Americans all over the world today have the right to vote.
Youngest of 20 children, Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Mississippi into a sharecropping family on October 6, 1917. Hamer was six years old when she started working on the plantation and dropped out of school at 12 years old to work full time with the rest of her family. In 1962, she traveled with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to the county courthouse of Indianola to accomplish the goal of registering African Americans to vote, as she took the time to register herself. Due to registering, she was banned from the plantation. After the ban, she focused on the fight for civil rights.
Civil rights activists are known for being beaten and abused, and Hamer, unfortunately was no exception. In 1963, she was beaten so bad that it caused severe kidney damage, a blood clot behind one eye and a permanent limp. Not only was Hamer important to the African American community, she’s important to the disability community as well. Right now, the disability community is struggling to get to this polls for their voices to be heard. Just like Hamer, we can’t give up. We have to continue to fight and let the local people in our towns and cities know the obstacles that we face to cast that vote. We can’t allow the time, effort, and endless fight that individuals like Fannie Lou Hamer went through be in vain.
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