Fannie Lou Hamer from Lecture series: A Decade of Civil Rights History: 1960-1970: The Movement as Viewed by Participants, Loop College, Chicago

Reel-to-reel tape recording and cassette copy. Transcript of Hamer's speech is included. Hamer focuses on the period of 1960-1970, relating her experience as a timekeeper on a Ruleville, Mississippi plantation; describing acts of resistance towards the plantation owner; gaining political awareness through her first mass meeting in 1962; her experience in taking a literacy test to obtain a voter registration card in Indianola, Mississippi, resulting in Hamer becoming a fugitive for several months; returning to Ruleville to become the first Black woman in Sunflower County to become registered to vote; the police harassment endured by Hamer and her family; the arrest of Hamer, Annelle Ponder, Southwide supervisor of SCLC and several others in Winona, Mississippi, and the severe jail cell beatings that ensued; organizing the Mississippi Democratic Freedom (MFDP) party in 1964; Hamer's 1964 trip to Africa; and her views on human rights, politics in the south, Vietnam, school integration, the importance of Black history.