Fannie Lou Hamer’s Presidential Medal of Freedom will go on display in the next few months at the Two Mississippi Museums.
Hamer’s family donated the medal to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which operates the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
“Our hope is that others will see it and want to learn more about Aunt Fannie Lou, her life, her legacy and the tremendous sacrifices she made on behalf of others,” Hamer’s niece, Monica Land, said in a press release Monday.
Curators will decide where the medal is displayed, said Michael Morris, director of the two museums that are side-by-side in downtown Jackson.
“Our museums already trace much of her life’s work,” Morris said. “The medal symbolizes the impact her courageous activism has had on the lives of Black people in Mississippi and across the nation.”
In this Sept. 17, 1965, file photo, Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville speaks to Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party supporters outside the Capitol in Washington after the House of Representatives rejected a challenger to the 1964 election of five Mississippi representatives. Credit: AP PhotoHamer was born Fannie Lou Townsend in 1917 to sharecroppers in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She joined the Civil Rights Movement in 1961 after attending a meeting with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She became a SNCC organizer in 1962.
Hamer went on to become a key figure in Mississippi’s Civil Rights Movement.
In 1964, Hamer helped organize Freedom Summer and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The party traveled to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and tried to be recognized as an official delegation. She also addressed the Credentials Committee, speaking out about her experiences with racism and human rights abuses in Mississippi on national television.
Credit: Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and HistoryHamer was part of Mississippi’s first racially integrated delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Hamer was 59 when she died of cancer in 1977. Former President Joe Biden posthumously awarded her the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January during his final weeks in office.
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