 Well, hello from the National Archives public programs and education team. My name is Missy McNatt and I'm an education specialist in Washington, D.C. And welcome to the National Archives Comes Alive Young Learners Program. You can find information about our future programs on the National Archives website, archives.gov, under attend an event, and on the National Archives Facebook page. This morning we meet Fannie Lou Hamer, portrayed by Sheila Arnold, actor, master storyteller, and teaching artist with her company, Histories Alive. Fannie Lou Hamer was an activist in the 1960s and 1970s for voting rights, women's rights, and civil rights. She worked to ensure that there was equality, freedom, and opportunity to make the United States a more just society. In the holdings of the National Archives are the remarks that Miss Fannie Lou Hamer made at the Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee at the National Democratic Convention in 1964. And on this slide we see two pages of those remarks. And you can access the entire speech at docsteachdocsteach.org. On the next slide we see the featured activity for Fannie Lou Hamer and voting rights. Again, it's in docsteachdocsteach.org. And we will share this slide again at the end of the program. At the end of Miss Hamer's presentation we will have a question and answer session with her. So please write your questions in the YouTube chat box. We have a National Archives staff member who is monitoring it for us. And let us know where you are watching from today. This program is brought to you by the National Archives public programs and education team, the National Archives and the National Archives Foundation. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce to you a hero of the civil rights movement Miss Fannie Lou Hamer. Good morning, it's mighty good to be here. I always like to start with the song. For folks always said that my voice is one of the things that would help them get strength. It helps me too. So I'm going to sing one of the songs I believe in with all my heart. This little light of mine I'm going to let it shine. This little light of mine I'm going to let it shine. This little light of mine I'm going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. I sure enough love that song. I've known that song before I even knew anything else it seems. But it's a song I believe in. I believe in this song. I believe that all of us need to let our light shine. We need to let it shine even when things around you be wrong. Even when things around you be difficult, you've got to let your light shine. Well, it's a good lady said I am Fannie Lou Hamer and I've been around for quite a while talking about voting rights and working with folks from civil rights and working with the young folk, with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, what folks call SNCC. And even was there when the students came down in the summer of Mississippi Freedom Summer. It was something else to have folks there, the young people there. But I wasn't always somebody that was talking about voting rights and I thought I might share with you just for a little bit about what it was like for me as I was coming up. Now I'm going in and steady yourself down so we can have a conversation here. You see, I was born in 1917 and I am the youngest of 20 children. That's right. I have myself 19 brothers and sisters, well actually 14 brothers and five sisters. My mom and daddy, Jim and Luella Townsend, well, they were sharecroppers. Some folks say they needed a lot of children so we could all get out there and work in the field at some point in time. Now I'm not certain if you know what a sharecropper is. Make sure you know. You see a sharecropper lives on the land that someone else owns. And the sharecropper actually helps take care of that land and grow what's on that land and in our case it was cotton. But in order to grow that land we had to buy the seed that we was going to grow, buy the fertilizer, buy the supplies that were needed. And we did the planting and the weeding and the picking of the crops but we had to give a share of our profits to the landowner. Well after you paid for what you had to borrow from him, sometimes you're hard to have anything at all left over just for eating and sleeping. But my parents were sharecroppers and so eventually I became that. But while I was growing up I tell you life was worse than hard. It was horrible. I never did have enough to eat and I don't remember how old I was before I got my first pair of shoes but I was a big girl. Mama tried to keep our feet warm by wrapping them in rags and tying them with string. I always wished I was like folks that always seemed to have things like the man who owned our land and other landowners and all of them was white and well I wish I had what they had. But when I was about six years old I started picking coffee. I started because of some candy. Now some of y'all out there, you like candy? I like the Mary Jane Candies. I don't know if y'all know what that is but it has little peanut butter inside of it and it's awful good. I enjoy that. But this man come up to me when I was walking along, wasn't doing nothing. I was being a child. And he say, girl, you like candy? I say yes sir. He say, you want some candy here, take this bag and go out there and you fill this bag up with the cotton, I'll give you some candy. Well I'd do anything for some little candy. So I go on out there and I pick, I fill up the bag and he give me candy. The next day I was walking along, he see me again, he ask me again if I want candy, give me that bag again and from the time I was six years old I was picking cotton. For a part time doing it just for candy. I was already learning how to be a sharecropper. By the time I got to be 12 or so years old, I was picking two to 300 pounds a day of cotton. That's a lot of working out there and sure enough was. And we started getting along pretty well, family and I and my daddy even bought a car. But as soon as we get a mule, well somebody come by thinking that we didn't need to borrow money no more and they poisoned our mule. We had to start right back down at the bottom again. Right back to sharecropping and not having our own land. That's what was like for me and my family. Now I did go to school. I went to school from between December through March. That's when I had time and then I was back out in the field. But by the time I got to be 12 years old I had to quit school. But it didn't mean I quit learning. No, no, it meant that every moment I had if I saw a scrapper paper on the underground I'd pick up that scrap of newspaper and I start reading it and holding on to it. I always believed that I need to have an education. And I tried to hold on to what I had. Well by the time I was 27 I got married to Parry, Heyma, and we called him PAP. He said I was old woman by the time I got married, but I was just fine. PAP is a good man and always been good to me. But I suspect what I would lead me to, I did all that working in my life. Worked hard even as I got older and PAP and I we moved out of Montgomery County, moved over to Ruleville and the Sunflower County right there in Mississippi. And we still work in this sharecroppers. It's what I've known all my life. That's all I know. Until it was 1962 and it was in August. It was August that year. I remember because it was a hot summer, that's for sure. And I had said something to a friend of my momma's and a friend of my momma's had heard me. I had said something. I've been short with them and I was like, oh, after I had said those words and I was apologetic, you know, how you say something when you're tired and you don't mean it to come out that way. And that's how it was for me. So I went back to that friend and I said, I'm sorry, I was just tired. I apologize. I hope I can make it up to you. Well, my friend said, you can. You come on to church tonight and you hear what they talking about. Well, I don't mind going to church. I just wasn't expecting to go to church that evening. And so I went and got ready to go to church. And I got there and we got in and we sang a little bit. And then this one of the folks stood up. He was from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference called SCLC and then had some of those folks from SNCC. Like I told you, stood nonviolent coordinating committee. They was there and they got up and they started talking. And one of them got up and said, you have the right to vote in Mississippi and a right to vote in America. Well, I mean, I tell you, I had never heard such a thing. Never heard such a thing. They never taught me that. They never taught me that I would have the right to vote. And when I heard it was all right as human beings to register and vote and I didn't even know any black folk could, because nobody ever told me. I started thinking I could just see me voting people out that I know was wrong. But what was the point of being scared and scared about voting? I couldn't understand folks that they were scared to vote. And I was like, no, I want the chance to be able to vote for the people that are going to me and my people right. And so when they asked, who would like to go to Indianola? That was the county seat where we were. Who'd like to go there and register to vote down at the town hall? Well, I raised my hand. Now stood up and I said, I'll go and some other of us got ready to go. Well, I was sure enough excited that I found out I could vote. I was sure enough mad that it took me that long to figure out I could vote to. So I was ready and I was going to make sure everybody around me knew about voting. Well, on the day that we got ready to go, we got on a bus, a school bus, and we got on that bus and folks got on as they were picking folk up and I got on that bus with other folk and we're just talking and laughing. But the closer we got to Indianola, closer we got to that town hall, folks started to get quiet. You could see them being afraid, being worried. You see, we was doing something that most folks never did. We were black people going up to the county town hall to register to vote. And that just didn't happen. They always scared you away if folk even tried. But most of us didn't even know. I saw them getting worried. I was determined we was going to do this. So I decided to do what I do real good. I started to sing. Go tell it on the mountain over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that freedom's coming soon. And I think also saying I ain't going to let nobody turn me around. Turn me around. Turn me around. No, you're going to let nobody turn me around. I'm going to keep on walking and keep on talking till we get to freedom land. Oh, I started singing. Folks started singing along with me. We were feeling pretty good. Now, I got off the bus first. I got off the bus first and I went on in with another woman and we went on in. We could only go in two at a time, they say, two at a time. So I go on in and I goes in and with the other lady and we say that we's here to vote, that's what I say. They only let us go one in the office. Two of us go in the building at the time, but only one into the office at the time. So I tell her I was here to vote. That woman looked at me. She did what's so concerned and and she said, well, what's your name? I say, saying who you work for? I tell her I work for for Marlowe W.D. Marlowe and she's saying, all right. And then she go to the back office and I could hear some talking inside there. And when she finally come out and close that office door, she had gone into. She reached up above her desk there and she pulled down this big book and she put that book in front of me and she just opened it up and she pointed to the paragraph and she said, this is a Mississippi Constitution. I need you to read it and tell me what it means. I had to just chuckle. I didn't even know Mississippi had a Constitution. And it wasn't that I couldn't read, but I sort of didn't understand what it was trying to tell me. Well, I didn't get to register to vote that way. She said, if I couldn't read and understand it, then I couldn't vote. The next person come in behind me and the same thing happened. Well, on that day, not a single person got to vote that was on got to register to vote or that was on that bus. But we felt real good. We knew what we need to do now, so we could get to vote. We weren't sad about it. We just knew that we could we could come back, but we'd be ready next time. So we started on our way home. And some of y'all might have heard me talk about some of this and my my speech that I did for the Democratic National Convention and 64 and such. But but you may have heard of some of this, but I but I say it again. I we drove on the way home with a smile on our face, but they stopped us. The Indian or the county police officer stop us and then tell the bus driver, give a ticket to the bus driver and tell them that the ticket is because the bus is the wrong color. It was a school bus. I don't know what color your school buses are, but our school buses are yellow. It was supposed to be that color, but he got a ticket for driving a bus the wrong color. Well, we all gather what money we could so we could pay off that ticket for him right then and then I get on back home. I goes on back home. I'm thinking about all that doesn't happen. And before I get right good to where I live at right there on the property of W.D. Marlowe, before I get over there to his property. Well, my girls come running up to me. My girls come running up to me and they say, talk about how master is just mad. Oh, he just mad. And for they can say nothing more. Pap come up to me and say, girls, tell you. You in for some trouble there. And for he can get it out real good. There come Master Harlow, Mr. Harlow, Marlowe. He look at me and he said, mm, mm, mm. He said, did your husband tell you, did your husband tell you about that that you shouldn't be going around trying to register the vote? And I said, yes, sir, I heard that. He said, well, I mean that. I said, well, sir, and I wasn't trying to be smart here. I was just trying to speak it. I said, sir, I didn't. I didn't go down to vote to register for you. I went to register for myself. Oh, he looked at me and he said, if you don't go down and take back that registration and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave this property. I didn't know what to say that, you know, because I I didn't do it for him. And then he said, right after that, and even if you do withdraw, you still might have to leave. And sure enough, he told us that we had to the next day to be gone. Oh, we go live with some friends in the town. One day, Pap woke up and Pap said, we got to go now. We got to gather family, go find another place to live. Now, Pap has always been a man that when he thinks something is being his spirit real hard, well, I listened to him. So we moved to another place. We was right to do so. Because that night, someone fired into that home where we were sleeping into the very room we would have been at, fired their guns. We moved to a place. Ain't nothing but another shack I lived in and had no running water. Had to go to the well to get that. No good electricity. Had to fire up the entire scene lamps. But that's when I realized, well, I could do more to help people to vote because what they're going to do to me, they can't take away nothing else from it. And I decided I was going to go around and help everybody vote. Everybody because they had the right. The right to vote. You see, the voting didn't matter what the color of your skin was. It didn't matter if you were a man or woman. It didn't matter where you come from or what language you speak, as long as you here in America and you an American. You you can vote. That's what the Constitution says. Not just in Mississippi, but also in the United States. And I wanted folk to know that they didn't know that before. Now, the truth be young and maybe some old and said on here to the truth be I've been hurt pretty bad. For just wanting folk to to be able to vote. I've had my my block, my eye hurt so bad from from a beating. It almost closed up. And I still have difficulties in my goodness because of folk kicking on me. But just because that happened. More than once. Didn't mean I was going to stop. It just meant I was going to keep speaking up. And telling folks how important it was to vote. I have. Enjoyed. My life. Of speaking out. Because I remember that little girl who was six years old. All she wanted was some candy. Instead, she was made into a sharecropper. She didn't get to go have the education and she should have been able to have that little girl worked real hard. Not even knowing she had a right to make a difference. So now I'm a grown woman. And I work hard so that children, just like I was, will know they have a right. As they grow up. They're going to vote too. I believe in America, the land of the free. The home of the brave. I believe in our country. We don't need to be afraid of a phone call threatening our lives. Not here in America. I believe that we can find a way to all live together. This little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine. Oh, this little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine. Oh, this little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Well, thank you. Oh, my goodness. So inspiring. And I your light did shine on many, many, many people and made a difference. So voting, obviously, very important. Yes. When did you finally vote? I certainly hope so. And when? Well, I went back the next January in 1963 and went back the next January. And then I was able to register. And I had to read a good bit and such like that. But I did. I was able to register and to vote in the first election that come up after that. That's what I was able to do right there the next year. That's that's wonderful. That's that's good. And I know that that was just the beginning of many efforts and lots took more time and sort of another. Oh, OK. Question here. Did you work with Dr. King and others, I guess, from, you know, the southern leadership leadership? Yes, indeed. Well, I know Dr. King and such like that. And I didn't get to work right beside him, particularly met him when I was in the Democratic National Convention in 64. He spoke right before I spoke. I don't know if you knew that, Ms. McNat, but he did. He spoke right before I vote. Before I spoke and I got to, you know, I knew about him and he knew about me, but we didn't know each other real well. But I worked with so many of us, particularly in the SELC and other men and women that that were that were just they were on the ground. Bob Moses from the from SNCC was just amazing man to work with. And I enjoyed being around him a good bed. And and I just I didn't work with a lot of folks, not all of whose names you would know, some you would. And even some young folk that was was killed, good men and shawarma and Lord have mercy. It's been a long day. I'll have to think about the other good men, shawarma. And oh, goodness gracious, I'm having one of those days while I'm forgetting people's names. But I'm going to come back to that. Don't you worry? And but those are the young young folk that was that was killed and and I knew them quite well. And that just was was a hard thing to watch them to realize that some folks that I knew, Cheney, that's right, Bob Cheney, good men, shawarma and Cheney, three young men that was killed in Mississippi. I knew all three of them. And I tell you, their deaths had a lot to do with us being able to get voting rights done. Yeah, but horrifying. I mean, certainly that that people just for the right to vote. But incredible, the work that was done to have that. So just a few folks, we have some folks from Maryland, from Poughkeepsie, New York, Ohio and Colorado. So if anybody else wants to jump in there and let us know. But another question for you. So you you talked about many of the things early on. But I, you know, I looked a little bit into your life and I know that you did many things throughout. But what would you say was your greatest accomplishment? The thing that perhaps you are most proud of? Well, I'm proud of what we did for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, because it was the first time in Mississippi where we had where we had both blacks and whites that were representing our state at the at the National Convention. That was the first time. Can you imagine a state that has more black folks? Sometimes it has white folk and we didn't have any that will represent us when we went to the Democratic National Convention. I was able to put that party together with a lot of help. Yes, but able to put together a party of blacks and whites all wanting to be able to represent our state. I'm most proud of that. And I'm also proud of that because it changed the rules of the Democratic National Convention. Now you had to represent everybody. That was not important. The other thing that's been really important to me now and is that I put together a cooperative form so that folks could, you know, because color doesn't have anything to do with Hungary or Hungary doesn't have anything to do with color. And so a place where people could begin to grow their own foods and learn how to keep food on their table. That was really important to me, too, because I started to realize that that was one thing all of us have in common, is that we can bring people out from poverty and being poor. Well, I hope that answers your question. I'm sure it was. Both of those things are really amazing. And I think you inspire the way you inspire people, too, you know, throughout your life. But also thinking about your schooling, you said that you only went until you were about 12 and, you know, that you only went a few months a year, but you loved to read. And so did you ever manage to go to a library and find more books and things like that? I guess there were some things there, too. Well, I just laughed because where I was, the libraries were seven. And there was only one library. Sometimes you might be able to go on a particular day or in a particular door and such, but I wouldn't have no time for that during during most of my time because I was working. So I didn't often have time to go to a library. I spent most of my reading would have been pieces of the newspaper or the newspaper when I got older, if I could, and if I could find one I could read and then also reading the good book, you know, the Bible and such was real important. And we always have that around the house. And every now and then a magazine, somebody might have or or throw it over to the side. I might get that, but I didn't get to go a library. Libraries will segregate, segregate. And that kind of leads into another question about is chaircropping. So did you ever get out in your family, ever get out of that chaircropping system and. Well, the truth is the only way we got out is I started to want to vote. Then we couldn't do that no more. And Pap had to look for other work and and I was doing whatever would come my way. But I started to once I was freed from chaircropping, I got to spend most of my time, most of my time going about and really trying to do what I could about voting rights and civil rights and Pap, he gets some things that he can get done. And we just try to make the best we can of it. So it is sort of thinking of your family. You mentioned at one point, your daughter's coming. So how many children did you have? Well, they, they, well, there is my girls because I say there's my girls, but I didn't give birth right to them and such. So there's my, there's family. And so we raised them when their mama was gone and such and mama and daddy be gone. So we raised them, but and they, my girls, that's what they is. They's my girls, but I couldn't have children. I only found out much later that, well, and they did this sometimes they would take poor women and they would, they would take out the inside of you that has children just cause you was poor and they wouldn't tell you. That's one of the things I was going to make a vote on. Making sure that never happened to nobody. Never did. And I wanted to have children, but then I couldn't. I don't wish that on nobody. No, no, that is, yeah, some of the things that went on are almost beyond belief. That, you know, we are, as, as you said in there, the land, the home of the, the free and the land of the brave may have it wrong there. But, you know, the fact that this is what we were supposed to be and that we, we were not that way. And, you know, moving that way slowly, I think over time. So we are, yeah, getting close to the end of our program and thank you for everybody who has been watching. And we always like to end with this one last question. And that is what advice as Fannie Lou Hamer, do you have for young people today? Well, my advice comes quick. I done said it over and over and over again. Don't hate somebody. Even if they are cruel to you, if they misuse and abuse, you don't take the time to hate them. You see, it takes time to hate somebody, time to cross the road from them so that you can't, you don't want to be anywhere near them. It takes time for folks to hate us. They got to think about it all the time. I don't have that time. You don't have that time. I feel pity for folks that hate me because I'm gonna love them even when it is difficult. So I feel pity for them, but I ain't gonna take no time to hate. And I don't want you to either because whether you believe it or not, loving and not hating is gonna gather you more friends and more folk that'll be on your side than on their side. Oh, I know, I know. It seems like it's not gonna happen like that because it seems like those that hate are real loud. They got to be loud because they're less of them than of us who stand up for what's right. Don't you ever forget that, that you don't have to hate nobody and that you're gonna have lots of other folks to stand right with you if you do what's right and you find a way to at least try to, well, at least pity them if you can't like them and try hard to love them not because they's good people, but because they just don't understand. They don't understand how good you are. Good you are. Well, that is wonderful advice and you are truly a good and wonderful and decent person who has made some of the changes in our world in any United States today and we are a better place because of you. So thank you for joining us and telling us your story this morning. And thank you, just been a pleasure, a true pleasure too. Thank you so much for letting me come. And as promised, here is the activity for today's program on Docs Teach. I encourage you to check it out. It actually has the remarks that she made at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. So please docsteachdocsteach.org. And then we hope you can join us for our program in February with Rosa Parks, the woman who took a stand by sitting down. So thank you for joining us and hope to see you in February.