On This Day in History: August 22

Fannie Lou Hamer Voting Rights Speech

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There are a whole lot of Americans who really hate it when Black people vote. One of the most powerful speeches in the history of the United States was delivered by Black woman and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer on August 22, 1964, to an audience of millions, to denounce voter suppression.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 22, 1964--

It was at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City where Hamer gave her nation-changing speech, and President Johnson was scared shitless of her. Fannie, who had worked tirelessly to get the vote for Black people in her state after being forcefully sterilized in 1962, walked with a limp and had a blood clot behind her eye from being beaten by police for her efforts. 

She formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to counter the all-white Democratic delegation that was full of segregationist assmunchers, and demanded credentials to speak at the DNC. Johnson was shitting his pants because he needed Democratic Party support in the south, so he held an impromptu press conference to derail her speech, but it didn’t matter. 

Entering Boardwalk Hall, Fannie had to shoulder her way through men who refused to give her space. She then spoke without the benefit of notes for 13 captivating minutes on the oppressive regulations in her state that made it nigh impossible for Black people to vote. She described being stalked by police, fired from her job, arrested, brutally beaten while in police custody, and shot at, all for daring to register to vote. It was during this speech she coined the term “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” 

Hamer went into detail of the many roadblocks put in front of Black people who attempted to vote in Mississippi. Despite the right being guaranteed in the constitution, white supremacists in the state did all they could to prevent Black people from having a political voice, including administering literacy tests and a host of other bullshit voter-suppression hoop jumping. Add to this the state-sanctioned violence and employers firing Black people who registered to vote, and it kept white racists firmly in control of the state. 

Hamer closed her speech by saying, “I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?” President Johnson’s press conference did serve to interrupt the broadcasting of Hamer’s speech, but it was later shown on the evening news for millions to see. The speech proved a pivotal moment in American history that contributed to the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Of course, it was far from the waving of a magic wand. To this day voter suppression is a significant problem in the U.S. 

Fannie Lou Hamer continued fighting for equality after her landmark speech. She died in 1977 and was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. 

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