Freedom.
There are few people who embody that word quite like Fannie Lou Hamer.
The Ruleville native was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a White House ceremony last week.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors, according to the White House. Among the 19 recipients, a list that includes politicians, an athlete, an actor, a musician and a fashion designer, Hamer stands out as being arguably one of the only honorees this year whose name is synonymous with freedom.
“She stood up in a time when it was really dangerous to speak out, especially an African American in Mississippi talking about the right to vote,” Hamer’s close friend and Civil Rights colleague Charles McLaurin told The Enterprise-Tocsin this week. “I feel so good that I played a role in bringing her to the attention of the nation.”
Doris Hamer Richardson accepted the award on behalf of Hamer’s family and her cousin, Monica Land, who was unable to attend the ceremony, according to a release from the family.
Land, who is project director of the Sunflower County Film Academy — a young filmmakers’ workshop for high school students in the Delta — is the producer of the award-winning film, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, that aired on PBS and WORLD Channel in February 2022.
Land’s maternal grandfather, Richardson’s father and Hamer’s husband, Pap, were brothers, according to the release.
“I have so many wonderful memories of Aunt Fannie Lou,” Richardson said. “It’s an amazing feeling to be here in D.C. to honor her. And I’m so grateful that she is being recognized with this award and that history continues to be made in her name.”
Hamer’s fight for human rights, voting rights and civil rights began right here in Sunflower County, more than 60 years ago when she boarded a bus headed from Ruleville to Indianola. The sharecropper was among a few African Americans who made the trip that hot August day to register to vote at the Sunflower County Courthouse.
Hamer faced immediate backlash, and early on she left the plantation that she and her family lived and worked on. But her life’s work was only getting started. Hamer not only became an advocate for civil rights, but she also became the face, even within the Civil Rights movement, for some of the nation’s most oppressed people.
“During those days, even the NAACP and the national organizations focused on the middle class, and they worked from the top down,” McLaurin said. “Therefore, a lot of what they were saying did not directly speak to a grassroots people.”
McLaurin said that Hamer’s “whole aim was to do God’s work, to do things to improve the quality of life for people.” Hamer was also a humanitarian, providing clothing, housing and jobs for the poorest residents of the Mississippi Delta — both Black and white, according to her family’s release.
She brought the first Head Start program to the state, and she launched a Freedom Farm and Pig Bank so impoverished residents could have both fresh vegetables and meat in their diet.
Because of her love for children and left sterilized by a white doctor who gave her a hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent during a routine operation, Hamer and her husband also adopted four infant girls whose families were unable to care for them. Their last surviving child, Jacqueline, died in 2023.
Hamer’s testimony at the 1964 Democratic National Convention was broadcast live on national television, as she and others in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party fought to be seated at the convention. Her uncompromising courage did not win her any friends, even among those sympathetic to the movement on a national level, including then-President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Eventually, Mississippi’s white-dominated delegation would leave the convention in protest, and Hamer and other Civil Rights proponents would claim those seats.
“It’s overwhelming to see Aunt Fannie Lou recognized for her sacrifices on behalf of others to this magnitude,” her niece Land said. “And this is why our film about her life is so important. It allows a new and younger generation to get to know her and appreciate the freedoms they have because of her.”
McLaurin, who served as campaign chair for Hamer’s congressional run in the 1960s, said that other 2025 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom like actor Denzel Washington and NBA basketball legend Magic Johnson “got their voice through (Hamer).”
“Here’s a little sharecropper who walks out of a cottonfield and is standing before the President of the United States,” McLaurin said.
Hamer’s courage resulted in her being arrested and beaten on multiple occasions during the 1960s.
She passed away from breast cancer in 1977 at the age of 59. In August 2024, Hamer and others were honored with a historical marker in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the site of the 1964 DNC. Like the 2025 Medal of Freedom, much of the positive press for Hamer has come posthumously. It’s not the kind of recognition that Hamer sought while she was alive, McLaurin said, but it’s something that she would have embraced.
“She would have been shocked, but she would have been there smiling,” McLaurin said.
