Fannie lou hamer biography timelines

The following chronology of Fannie Lou Hamer’s activist career is mostly drawn from Maegan Parker Brooks’s A Voice That Could Stir an Army.

October 6, 1917: Fannie Lou Townsend is born in Tomnolan, Mississippi.

Fannie lou hamer biography timelines

She is one of the twenty children of her parents, James Lee and Lou Ella Townsend.

1919: The Townsends find work on the E. W. Brandon plantation, near Ruleville, Mississippi. As a child, Fannie Lou Hamer contracts polio but recovers.

1944: Fannie Lou Townsend marries Perry “Pap” Hamer, who is employed on the Marlow plantation near to the Brandon’s.

The Hamers will labor for many years on the Marlow plantation. Fannie Lou Hamer is a literate and highly capable employee, and advances to a management job on the plantation.

1961: Hamer is involuntarily sterilized while undergoing a medical procedure.

She and her husband adopt and raise two children in the coming years.

August 27, 1962: Encouraged by her friend Mary T