Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 182. Fannie Lou Hamer

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182. Fannie Lou Hamer · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

0:12
Speaker 1: Hello delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
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Speaker 1: The history podcast that is not your history class with me,
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Speaker 1: your host Katie Charlwood, History Harlote, and we are of books.
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Speaker 1: So it has been a busy couple of weeks, Like
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Speaker 1: I've just been all over the show. I was in
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Speaker 1: London for the Young Sherlock premiere. I had sponsored a
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Speaker 1: women's football team like last year, and like I was
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Speaker 1: an official sponsor of a match this year and so
0:44
Speaker 1: I got to go to that, Like that was really fun.
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Speaker 1: I really believe in investing in women's sports, especially in
0:51
Speaker 1: my area because one support local and two there's not
0:54
Speaker 1: a lot of funding up in rural Ireland. So like
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Speaker 1: that's been a thing. In Axlo, I got a little
1:00
Speaker 1: notification from a like it's a rural school in the
1:05
Speaker 1: Gailtict and they're trying to send their kids to this
1:08
Speaker 1: robotic competition in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I'm like, okay,
1:12
Speaker 1: I'm going to pop their GoFundMe in places because you know,
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Speaker 1: they don't get a lot of opportunities and they're working
1:19
Speaker 1: really hard, and I really feel like we should be
1:21
Speaker 1: supporting children in every way we can. So I'm going
1:24
Speaker 1: to try and scrabble stuff together, like not a lot,
1:27
Speaker 1: because I don't have a lot, but like a little something,
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Speaker 1: just something, And I'll pose the link in places so
1:34
Speaker 1: people can donate to and just give these kids, you know,
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Speaker 1: the opportunity to see the world and to travel and
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Speaker 1: to actually build their stem robots and do stuff with them.
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Speaker 1: I don't know what they do, right, I'm just supportive.
1:49
Speaker 1: But yeah, and where else now? Oh and my daughter
1:52
Speaker 1: was in the Peace Problems, which was like a four
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Speaker 1: thousand kid choir with a cross border orchestra. And I
2:01
Speaker 1: don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting
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Speaker 1: an orchestra to play De Rude Sandstorm or a mid
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Speaker 1: two thousands club mega mix. I was like, what the
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Speaker 1: underrateens disco? What do I know? All these songs and
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Speaker 1: they're all like an opera singer and an orchestra is
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Speaker 1: a really good time. But I've rather get it into
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Speaker 1: this today because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katie,
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Speaker 1: quit your Jebbel Jabba in fact me, In fact you
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Speaker 1: I will. But first we've got to get our source on.
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Speaker 1: Our sources are to praise our bridges by Fanny Louhamer
2:40
Speaker 1: For Freedom's Sake. The Life of Fanny Louhaimer by Shanna Kylee,
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Speaker 1: Mississippi Movement by John Ditmer, Women of Color and the
2:52
Speaker 1: Reproductive Rights Movement by Jennifer Nelson, Civil rights Leader, Fanny
2:57
Speaker 1: lou Hamer, Her Unstoppable War against Jim Crow by Mark Elias,
3:03
Speaker 1: Fanny Louhamer by Deborah Michaels. And of course we have
3:07
Speaker 1: our old favorites. Biography dot com man History dot Com
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Speaker 1: isles it in comfortably good Lynleed's begin Fanny Louhamer was
3:18
Speaker 1: born Fanny Oma Louise Dubois Townsend on the sixth of
3:23
Speaker 1: October nineteen seventeen in Montgomery County, Mississippi, United States of America.
3:30
Speaker 1: She was born to James Lee Townsend and Luella Townsend.
3:35
Speaker 1: So the towns Ends were sharecroppers. And I covered this before,
3:39
Speaker 1: but sharecroppers were basically a version of tenant farming. After
3:44
Speaker 1: the American Civil War. Sharecropping was the South's attempt at
3:49
Speaker 1: reinventing labor relations without surrendering actual power. Landlords I mean sorry,
3:55
Speaker 1: I mean landowners allowed tenants to farm on their land
3:59
Speaker 1: in exchange for a cut of the crops. And this
4:02
Speaker 1: sounds like a cooperative deal, but was more like agricultural feudalism.
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Speaker 1: This may shock you, but the majority of sharecroppers were
4:12
Speaker 1: they formerly enslaved. This system kept poor farmers perpetually indebted
4:19
Speaker 1: while preserving the planter classes comfort. So not only would
4:25
Speaker 1: they get a share of the crop that you worked
4:28
Speaker 1: and you reaped right or they reaped what you sowed effectively,
4:33
Speaker 1: So not only would they get a cut of the crop,
4:36
Speaker 1: but you know, you would rent a property on their
4:39
Speaker 1: land at a really high rate. You would buy the
4:42
Speaker 1: seeds from them at a really high rate. You would
4:45
Speaker 1: also lease or rent or purchase your machinery from them
4:50
Speaker 1: at a really high rate. And this whole thing was
4:53
Speaker 1: just a way to keep you indebted. And they would
4:56
Speaker 1: have these really high prices. You would get undercut and
5:00
Speaker 1: even when they weighed, like sometimes they would shortchange the
5:03
Speaker 1: scales so that you would get paid less for the
5:06
Speaker 1: volume or weight of crop that you produced. When Fanny
5:14
Speaker 1: was born, she was just two generations out of slavery, right,
5:21
Speaker 1: her grandmother would have been enslaved, and when she was
5:25
Speaker 1: two years old, the family moved to Ruleville, Mississippi, to
5:29
Speaker 1: work as sharecroppers on a plantation. So Fanny was the
5:34
Speaker 1: youngest of twenty siblings. She had fourteen brothers and five sisters.
5:40
Speaker 1: Now I could not find all of their names, but
5:43
Speaker 1: I could find colisey, Arnold, Lither, Bell, Joe, Alan, Theodora,
5:52
Speaker 1: Frank Noahnoma, Laura, Mabel, and Perlin. So there was more
6:01
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't find them. I couldn't find them.
6:05
Speaker 1: That being said, when a family has like such a
6:08
Speaker 1: high amount of people in it, when they go and
6:12
Speaker 1: they're renting like this one building and they're going to
6:15
Speaker 1: work on this plantation, the plantation owners probably rubbing their hands, going, oh,
6:19
Speaker 1: look at all this very cheap, practically free labor. Like
6:24
Speaker 1: that is a steady workforce, and the majority of it's
6:26
Speaker 1: quite young, so they're going to last a long time.
6:30
Speaker 1: So the older children would go pick cotton and the
6:34
Speaker 1: younger children would stay at home, Like it's a version
6:38
Speaker 1: of parentification, but it's out of necessity. So Fanny she
6:44
Speaker 1: has a limp, and this is like throughout her life.
6:46
Speaker 1: Now it was often blamed on polio, which she had.
6:51
Speaker 1: You know, as a kid, she did have polio, she
6:53
Speaker 1: had contract it, but the limp wasn't a result of polio.
6:59
Speaker 1: It was because of a childhood accident. So her older brother,
7:04
Speaker 1: who like these kids are between the ages of six
7:06
Speaker 1: and ten, like they are young. So he's trying to
7:10
Speaker 1: give her a bath, he's trying to do the right thing,
7:12
Speaker 1: and he drops her and breaks her leg. Right, it's
7:15
Speaker 1: clear her leg is broken, and one of the sisters
7:18
Speaker 1: like they like they try and like set it, but
7:23
Speaker 1: they don't quite do it because their children and like
7:28
Speaker 1: they only really admit to this in their forties, like
7:31
Speaker 1: it takes them a long time to actually explain what happened.
7:34
Speaker 1: But yet nobody knew the severity of the damage at
7:37
Speaker 1: the time. And kids, they're scared, like you don't want
7:42
Speaker 1: to get in trouble, and you think you're doing the
7:44
Speaker 1: right thing, and that's you know, I mean, it's an
7:47
Speaker 1: awful situation. And again their children they don't know any better.
7:53
Speaker 1: So from the age of six though, because your fanny's
7:56
Speaker 1: the youngest out of twenty, she's outing cotton. So she's
8:01
Speaker 1: in the field to their family, and she's picking like
8:03
Speaker 1: thirty pounds of cotton, which is probably more than what
8:08
Speaker 1: she weighs at that point, because you know, impoverished and young.
8:14
Speaker 1: During the summer months, she worked. During the winter months,
8:18
Speaker 1: she attended a one room school room for the sharecroppers children.
8:22
Speaker 1: So basically the sharecroppers got together and they sort of
8:26
Speaker 1: made a school because they wanted to ensure the children
8:29
Speaker 1: had some kind of education. They wanted to make sure
8:32
Speaker 1: they were literate, you know, that they could read and write.
8:36
Speaker 1: And so she was there from nineteen twenty four to
8:39
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, so six years, and all the while she
8:43
Speaker 1: would spend just over half the year working, you know,
8:47
Speaker 1: sun up to sundown, April to October, sometimes November, you know,
8:52
Speaker 1: if the weather was on their side. And so for
8:57
Speaker 1: a little bit she'd be at school. Now I'm going
8:59
Speaker 1: to talk about her parents for a wee bit, because
9:03
Speaker 1: they weren't just sharecroppers, like, they weren't just in the
9:07
Speaker 1: system that was, you know, full of indignity and constantly
9:11
Speaker 1: pushing them down. So they had like second and thud jobs.
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Speaker 1: So James Ley, he was a Baptist minister. He instilled
9:24
Speaker 1: faith in his family, raising them on like Bible stories
9:27
Speaker 1: and the like. Right, and Louella, well, she was always
9:32
Speaker 1: she was always working. Right. She was a housemaid for
9:35
Speaker 1: the landlord's family during the off season, she cooked for them,
9:39
Speaker 1: like I said, she did their laundry. She also processed
9:43
Speaker 1: pigs in the exchange for parts, so like intestines, trotters,
9:48
Speaker 1: the snoot, so like the the snout, so they would
9:52
Speaker 1: get the off cuts and the remnants of the animal.
9:54
Speaker 1: You know, I think there's that quote of it being
9:57
Speaker 1: like you know, they're leftover. Is just was then creatively
10:03
Speaker 1: made into a cultural meal. So basically if they could
10:11
Speaker 1: use it, they did, like this is a waste, not
10:13
Speaker 1: what not necessary for survival situation, and they did their
10:21
Speaker 1: best to feed themselves as well as they could. But
10:25
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking at this point, you're still going
10:27
Speaker 1: through like the Great Depression is going to be hidden.
10:30
Speaker 1: Like it's not an easy time for anybody. And Fanny Lewis,
10:36
Speaker 1: she's at school Dezember to March, right, that's a really
10:40
Speaker 1: short time. But she is bright. She absorbs information. She
10:46
Speaker 1: loves reading and poetry, and she would attend like not
10:50
Speaker 1: only this little shack school, but also a Sunday school.
10:55
Speaker 1: And also she had all these Bible stories at home,
10:58
Speaker 1: so this would be reinforced. So they would read, they
11:02
Speaker 1: would write, they would engage and the towns ends. They
11:07
Speaker 1: were really really supportive of their children being educated. And
11:14
Speaker 1: the thing is she would have to leave school at
11:17
Speaker 1: around thirteen years old, so basically this incident occurs. So
11:24
Speaker 1: she and her mother and a bunch of other people
11:26
Speaker 1: they're clearing land. So in order for learn to be planted,
11:29
Speaker 1: they have to clear the old like roots out tille
11:33
Speaker 1: and then replant the seeds. So everything is completely normal
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Speaker 1: until Luella shrieks. Like they're just doing their clearing, she
11:44
Speaker 1: just gives this ungodly scream and her hands cover her face.
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Speaker 1: Fanny Lou runs to her mother and discovers that there
11:52
Speaker 1: is a massive wood chip like lodged in the eyeball,
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Speaker 1: and in a moment of panic, she just pulls it out.
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Speaker 1: The eye is then washed out because well it's mainly
12:05
Speaker 1: going blood, you know, like aqueous humor, vitreous humor, all
12:09
Speaker 1: that stuff, and yeah, blood, So that is a very
12:14
Speaker 1: scary sight for a thirteen year old. It's then bandaged
12:20
Speaker 1: because what else could she do in that situation. She
12:24
Speaker 1: cleans it and she bandages it because she's a child,
12:28
Speaker 1: she's not a medical professional. Needless to say, this is
12:33
Speaker 1: not great for Lluella's vision. But you know, at this point,
12:39
Speaker 1: like what else could they do. But they had been
12:43
Speaker 1: working towards trying to have a better future for a
12:47
Speaker 1: long time, and so the town's ends, like they're in
12:51
Speaker 1: they're probably near their sixties at this point, and they
12:55
Speaker 1: had saved money to get rent in this cabin and
12:58
Speaker 1: they started fixing it up, and you know, there was
13:01
Speaker 1: like a little farmland area. They bought secondhand equipment. They
13:05
Speaker 1: had three mules and a cow, which were part livestock,
13:09
Speaker 1: part pitt So things were looking up. They were building
13:13
Speaker 1: a better life and they were really excited about it.
13:19
Speaker 1: This was a chance to move out of sharecropping and
13:22
Speaker 1: start being able to support themselves and move out of poverty. However,
13:29
Speaker 1: white supremacists in the area weren't entirely happy with it
13:32
Speaker 1: at all. So one night they went to the lot
13:36
Speaker 1: and put poison into livestock food. Basically it was a
13:41
Speaker 1: toxic rott aside, you know, rat poison, well rodent poison
13:46
Speaker 1: to kill mice and rats. And the children arrived, like
13:49
Speaker 1: they would go every morning, they would pet the animals,
13:52
Speaker 1: they would feed them, and they would go on their way.
13:54
Speaker 1: And this morning they arrive to find one mule dead
14:02
Speaker 1: and the other two mules, and the cow dying and
14:05
Speaker 1: excruciating pain. And this really knocked the town's ends down.
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Speaker 1: And it's so disheartening to have everything you've worked for
14:16
Speaker 1: be destroyed by just evil people Like that is an
14:20
Speaker 1: objectively evil thing to do. You're mad that a family
14:26
Speaker 1: has worked hard enough that they are going to be
14:28
Speaker 1: able to support themselves, so you murder their animals in
14:32
Speaker 1: one of the more like cruel ways, Like they could
14:37
Speaker 1: have just shot the mules, right, but instead they poisoned
14:40
Speaker 1: them to ensure that they suffered and to ensure that
14:44
Speaker 1: they were in pain. So Fanny left school to work
14:50
Speaker 1: in the fields when she was thirteen, and she may
14:54
Speaker 1: not have had you know, education anymore, but she still
14:59
Speaker 1: had her father's sermons and his passion from the pulpit.
15:03
Speaker 1: It certainly passed on to his children, like some of
15:06
Speaker 1: his sons actually went on to become ministers themselves. Meanwhile,
15:11
Speaker 1: Fanny learned how to connect like not only just to
15:15
Speaker 1: like people, but to a captive audience. And what Fanny's
15:23
Speaker 1: teenage years were like, well, they're lost to time effectively.
15:28
Speaker 1: What we do know is that at twenty years old,
15:31
Speaker 1: she marries Charles Gray on the sixth of January nineteen
15:35
Speaker 1: thirty eight, and it's yeah, this marriage has never really
15:41
Speaker 1: brought up very much. It's just kind of like a
15:43
Speaker 1: blip in her life. And we don't know a lot
15:46
Speaker 1: about Charles Gray. We know that they got married and
15:50
Speaker 1: then later divorced in Sunflower County, Mississippi, and Charles filed
15:56
Speaker 1: for divorce in nineteen forty three, citing that Fanny had
15:59
Speaker 1: deserted him and took up with another man. Now, leaving
16:05
Speaker 1: your husband in the nineteen, like thirties, nineteen forties, like
16:10
Speaker 1: that's a big deal. Like typically, especially if you're impoverished,
16:14
Speaker 1: like there's a reason you're leaving. Yeah, there is a
16:18
Speaker 1: story there somewhere. But they divorced, and typically it's easier
16:24
Speaker 1: for a man to get a divorce than a woman.
16:26
Speaker 1: So maybe it was just maybe it was amicable and
16:28
Speaker 1: it was just their way of genuinely getting it split.
16:33
Speaker 1: So Fanny had been married for a year when she
16:36
Speaker 1: lost her father. So he dies of a stroke in
16:40
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, and that really hit her and it
16:46
Speaker 1: wasn't just a loss to her but to the community
16:48
Speaker 1: as a whole. And so a year after her divorce
16:54
Speaker 1: to Charles Gray, Fanny lu married Perry Hamer, known as Pap.
17:01
Speaker 1: That probably sounds a lot better in an American accent
17:04
Speaker 1: and not my voice, which I'm losing, which is why
17:07
Speaker 1: i haven't recorded up until now. So sorry, I'm doing
17:10
Speaker 1: my best. So Pop worked on the next plantation over.
17:14
Speaker 1: He drove a tractor and he maintained the farming equipment,
17:17
Speaker 1: so he was pretty high up on the chain. So
17:21
Speaker 1: he was a very necessary component of this plantation. So
17:27
Speaker 1: he made sure that he was necessary, you know. He
17:32
Speaker 1: also on the side ran a duke joint, which is
17:36
Speaker 1: my favorite little tipic because like he made sure that
17:38
Speaker 1: there was community. Now sometimes like you'll see this credited
17:43
Speaker 1: to James Lee Townsend instead of Pat Paymer, but it
17:48
Speaker 1: was Pat Paymer. So the landowner, WD. Marlowe, he noticed
17:55
Speaker 1: just how smart and bright Fanny Lou was, so he
17:58
Speaker 1: made her his timekeeper. So he was like, wow, you're literate.
18:02
Speaker 1: You can read, you can write, you can do math. Wow,
18:05
Speaker 1: I never knew a woman like you, lit a lonely
18:07
Speaker 1: person like you could do it. And so he was
18:11
Speaker 1: just like, great, you're my timekeeper. And so she would
18:15
Speaker 1: go between like workers and management and wigh everything right.
18:20
Speaker 1: So and she would keep all the logs. I remember
18:24
Speaker 1: when I said that a lot of landlords were like
18:26
Speaker 1: sneaky and sleek it earlier, and because crops were paid
18:30
Speaker 1: in weight, and so they calibrated their skills a little
18:33
Speaker 1: bit to be short. And so so she would do
18:37
Speaker 1: is she would sneak in properly calibrated skills to ensure
18:42
Speaker 1: that people were paid fairly and properly. Which I love
18:45
Speaker 1: that little little just nope and love that little sense
18:49
Speaker 1: of justice there. And like her mother before her, Fannilu
18:54
Speaker 1: worked in the homes of white families in the off season.
18:58
Speaker 1: Like she had a ethic. She was continuously working. She
19:03
Speaker 1: was ensuring that, you know, in a system that was
19:06
Speaker 1: designed to keep them down, that she was going to
19:09
Speaker 1: keep working to move up, just like her family wanted.
19:23
Speaker 1: Throughout this marriage, the Hamers would not have any biological children. However,
19:29
Speaker 1: when they were settled in when they were settled in
19:32
Speaker 1: in Marvel's plantation, a nine month old girl was brought
19:36
Speaker 1: to them Dorothy and Jean, the child of a single mother,
19:41
Speaker 1: and the pair took her in. Now there's a story
19:46
Speaker 1: that it's like a cousin's child or a sister's child,
19:49
Speaker 1: but she was unwed and that was just a no no,
19:52
Speaker 1: and so they adopted her right and when Fanny Lou
19:57
Speaker 1: was thirty six, Luella, her mother, moves in with them too,
20:02
Speaker 1: and not long after that, they were brought a baby girl, Virgie,
20:07
Speaker 1: and who had been like badly burned. So she was
20:09
Speaker 1: one of like literally nineteen children and the parents were struggling,
20:16
Speaker 1: like and so it's just one of those things where
20:18
Speaker 1: the younger kids were looking after the babies and so, like,
20:21
Speaker 1: she's only a couple months old at this point, and
20:25
Speaker 1: so she is cared for them. She's nurse back to health,
20:28
Speaker 1: and then she's brought back to her parents because her
20:33
Speaker 1: mother like wants her back. Now. It wasn't long actually
20:37
Speaker 1: before her uncle brings baby Virgie back and the Hamer's
20:43
Speaker 1: officially adopt her. Now, Fannie Lou wanted to ensure that
20:47
Speaker 1: for the remainder of her years that her mother was
20:51
Speaker 1: treated like a human being at last, Like that's a
20:53
Speaker 1: direct quote, a human being at last, And so she
20:57
Speaker 1: worked every hour that she could. So she's working to
21:01
Speaker 1: support her mother and also these children that have been
21:04
Speaker 1: brought into her life because she's just this incredibly caring person,
21:13
Speaker 1: like she's compassionate and passionate, and she's and she just
21:16
Speaker 1: wants to do what's right. And Fanny had grown up
21:21
Speaker 1: raised around passionate ministers, and this made its mark on
21:25
Speaker 1: her goodness, compassion, basic human decency. She believed in basic
21:32
Speaker 1: human rights and dignity. So it's no surprise that the
21:36
Speaker 1: Hamer started attending annual conferences. In the early nineteen fifties,
21:41
Speaker 1: the Regional Council of Negro Leadership held a conference in
21:45
Speaker 1: the all black town of Mound Bayo, Mississippi, to promote
21:48
Speaker 1: civil rights and education and business ownership. And the passion
21:53
Speaker 1: and optimism of this group really blew Fanny Lou away.
21:58
Speaker 1: They discussed everything from voting rights, community outreach like school integration.
22:05
Speaker 1: They even instituted a boycott. Basically, they would not buy
22:10
Speaker 1: fuel so like any gas for their vehicles. They wouldn't
22:14
Speaker 1: buy gas from any business that they could not use
22:18
Speaker 1: the toilet, so like the restroom, the bathroom, like if
22:20
Speaker 1: they couldn't use that in that facility in that business,
22:24
Speaker 1: they weren't buying from there. And civil rights movements were
22:28
Speaker 1: charging up through the fifties and into the sixties, integrations
22:32
Speaker 1: and schools, sit ins, bus boycotts, freedom, writers, the whole shebang.
22:37
Speaker 1: And this was something that they were really involved in
22:41
Speaker 1: and they really cared about. As well as on the
22:45
Speaker 1: grander scale, Fanny Lou was dealing with like personal problems
22:49
Speaker 1: like health wise. In nineteen sixty one, Fanny Lou was
22:52
Speaker 1: dealing with some abdominal pain. Naturally, she went to the doctor.
22:57
Speaker 1: I said, Naturally she went to the doctor after pap
22:59
Speaker 1: told her that she had to stop suffering and she
23:01
Speaker 1: should go to the doctor. And so he told her
23:05
Speaker 1: that she had to be seen. So she was complaining
23:08
Speaker 1: of and not in her stomach. And as I your
23:11
Speaker 1: different theories kicking about about this, So like she had
23:14
Speaker 1: suffered from polio as a child, and so this would
23:17
Speaker 1: have effects later on in her life. She may have
23:20
Speaker 1: had polycystic ovary systems so PCOS, which would have affected
23:25
Speaker 1: her too. I mean she'd also suffered several miscarriages, so
23:30
Speaker 1: it could be connected. Now was it fibroids? Was it tumors?
23:36
Speaker 1: Like so she had suffered like four years and this
23:41
Speaker 1: not at the time when she went to see this doctor,
23:43
Speaker 1: it was believed to be a uterine tumor and the
23:47
Speaker 1: weg doctor said that she would have to have surgery
23:51
Speaker 1: to remove the mass. So while she's undergoing surgery to
23:56
Speaker 1: remove cancer, or at least what they believed to be cancer,
24:01
Speaker 1: the doctor, for absolutely no medical reason, also decided to
24:06
Speaker 1: perform a hysterectomy without his patient's knowledge or consent. Like, oh,
24:15
Speaker 1: this is gonna get worse, by the way, this is
24:18
Speaker 1: going to get just terrible. She wasn't even informed by
24:22
Speaker 1: the doctor that her womb had been removed. She found
24:27
Speaker 1: out through a game of telephone. Right. The reason she
24:32
Speaker 1: found out that she had had a hysterectomy was because
24:37
Speaker 1: the doctor's wife told one of her white friends, and
24:41
Speaker 1: her cook overheard it, and this cook passed the information on,
24:47
Speaker 1: and the information about her own surgery made its way
24:52
Speaker 1: back to her because of a doctor's wife gossiping. And
24:57
Speaker 1: if you thought that this gets worse, then congratulations, you're correct.
25:03
Speaker 1: Mississippi legislation gave doctors the right to perform hysterectomies or
25:07
Speaker 1: tie the tubes of women without their knowledge or permission.
25:12
Speaker 1: Nothing quite like a white man in a position of
25:14
Speaker 1: power a certain control over a woman's body when she's unconscious.
25:21
Speaker 1: The justification for this was if the doctor thought a
25:24
Speaker 1: woman might be too poor to raise a child. It's
25:29
Speaker 1: a bullshit excuse. In this act, this was known as
25:35
Speaker 1: a Mississippi appendectomy in black communities, and this was a
25:40
Speaker 1: tactic used to limit black population in the South in
25:45
Speaker 1: voluntary sterilization. And this, I'm going to say, a fucking
25:49
Speaker 1: barbaric act had an official, an official number, an estimation
25:54
Speaker 1: of eight thousand. But as with everything, the number reported
25:59
Speaker 1: is off been far lower, right than unreported. Now we
26:05
Speaker 1: know that approximately over sixty thousand people were sterilized in
26:09
Speaker 1: the US under programs of eugenics up until the nineteen seventies.
26:15
Speaker 1: Now this is men, women, and people of various races
26:20
Speaker 1: and disabilities. So a number like eight thousand feels incredibly
26:27
Speaker 1: low in the grand scheme of things. The Mississippi appendectomy
26:34
Speaker 1: where thousands of black women went into doctor's office for
26:38
Speaker 1: gynological healthcare and left without their reproductive organs unwillingly and
26:44
Speaker 1: unknowingly the choice was taken from them. Right. Oh, you're thinking, Kerry,
26:50
Speaker 1: you're really fucking mad about this. Absolutely I am. That
26:54
Speaker 1: is medical abuse. That is violence. Okay, I don't care
26:59
Speaker 1: how you want to dress it up. And yes, things
27:02
Speaker 1: are just going to get worse from here. So if
27:04
Speaker 1: you're sensitive, you're probably going to want to exit in
27:08
Speaker 1: stage left and I'll see you. And then, no, you
27:10
Speaker 1: might not want to see the ex episode because the
27:11
Speaker 1: next episode actually, or of the podcast is it's so
27:15
Speaker 1: much worse. But anyway, and you're thinking, how could it
27:19
Speaker 1: be worse than this? Oh, you'll see so a year
27:25
Speaker 1: later when she is forty five, right, imagine being so
27:33
Speaker 1: concerned that a forty four year old woman was going
27:38
Speaker 1: to have children. Imagine that being your concern, even though
27:43
Speaker 1: the likelihood is quite low, you just wanted to remove that.
27:46
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm not sorry. Actually I'm fucking mad. Right,
27:52
Speaker 1: when she's forty five, a national coalition of civil rights
27:56
Speaker 1: groups had begun a voter registration drive, and so she's
28:01
Speaker 1: asked to like visit this church. So she goes in
28:04
Speaker 1: and incidentally, this is actually the same church that her
28:07
Speaker 1: funeral will be held in like years later, but that
28:12
Speaker 1: church is where she learned that black people had the
28:17
Speaker 1: right to vote. They had the constitutional right to vote,
28:21
Speaker 1: so they kind of had the right to vote. Black
28:25
Speaker 1: citizens could vote in theory, but in the South, Jim
28:29
Speaker 1: Crow laws prevented them from being actually able to vote
28:32
Speaker 1: in practice. So there was this huge drive to get
28:37
Speaker 1: African American citizens to vote, particularly those who were educated.
28:42
Speaker 1: So because they were doing like these tests to get people,
28:47
Speaker 1: you know that just tricks really so that people couldn't vote,
28:51
Speaker 1: and so they wanted to try and garner as many
28:54
Speaker 1: people who could like pass these tests and you know,
28:59
Speaker 1: tip the scales it because like in Mississippi, only five
29:03
Speaker 1: percent of the eligible black voters were registered, so even
29:09
Speaker 1: if they were able to cast their votes, these votes
29:11
Speaker 1: didn't really have much of an impact because it's such
29:15
Speaker 1: a small amount. And what is wild is that many
29:20
Speaker 1: counties in the state had a majority black population. So
29:24
Speaker 1: the fact that there was such low voter registration, right,
29:29
Speaker 1: it's it's wild. And with Jim Crow, they were intimidation tactics.
29:34
Speaker 1: You had lynching, violence, you had all these bloody loopholes,
29:38
Speaker 1: and of course the grandfather clause right, and throughout the yells,
29:43
Speaker 1: they like added hurdle after hurdle tests like how many
29:47
Speaker 1: bubbles are in a bar of soap? Right, and they
29:52
Speaker 1: have literacy tests and that was one such test. So
29:57
Speaker 1: hence why the drive to get educated citizens to register
30:01
Speaker 1: to vote. Now, Fanny lout growing up in the South,
30:07
Speaker 1: just existing like she was aware of the dangels if
30:10
Speaker 1: she tried to register, and her and seventeen others decided
30:16
Speaker 1: to just try, right, knowing what could happen to them
30:21
Speaker 1: if they did. And when she tried the first time,
30:27
Speaker 1: it was made as unpleasant and scary as possible. So
30:31
Speaker 1: when they arrive, like, there is just a group of
30:34
Speaker 1: white supremacist protetus outside right protetals protesters sorry, and she
30:42
Speaker 1: called them the KKK with lipstick, And so what they
30:47
Speaker 1: would do is they would only let two like people
30:50
Speaker 1: in at the time, making the rest way outside with
30:54
Speaker 1: the white supremacist protests like like, that's just a massive
31:02
Speaker 1: intimidation tactic. And this literacy test involved like so for
31:06
Speaker 1: white people, they'd be like, this is a stop sign,
31:11
Speaker 1: what is it? And they'd be like that's a stop thing,
31:13
Speaker 1: like congratulations, you can vote, and so that would be
31:18
Speaker 1: for them. For black citizens, however, this involved reading a
31:23
Speaker 1: section of the Mississippi Constitution, copying down what they had
31:27
Speaker 1: just read, and then interpreting it to the satisfaction of
31:30
Speaker 1: the registrar. Right and Fanny Luhima. She had to read
31:35
Speaker 1: a section on defacto law and she said afterwards that
31:40
Speaker 1: she knew as much about defacto law as a horse
31:43
Speaker 1: knew about Christmas Day, which is fair. So all eighteen
31:49
Speaker 1: people who tried to register that day failed. Wow, what
31:54
Speaker 1: a crazy random happenstance. So instead of giving up, Fanni
31:59
Speaker 1: lu said fuck this for a game of soldiers and
32:02
Speaker 1: decided she was going to try again. And she told
32:05
Speaker 1: them she was going to keep coming back until she
32:08
Speaker 1: passed that test. So after that first attempt, when she
32:13
Speaker 1: gets home, her boss W. D. Marlowe told her that
32:17
Speaker 1: if she was going to try and vote, that she
32:20
Speaker 1: shouldn't work for him anymore. And I love this response
32:26
Speaker 1: because she just says to him, She's like, I didn't
32:29
Speaker 1: go to vote for you, like you tell him, like
32:35
Speaker 1: do it, Leddy. So but this has also caused this
32:40
Speaker 1: whole situation like she's fired because she tried to vote,
32:44
Speaker 1: right or tried to register to vote. She hasn't even
32:46
Speaker 1: tried to vote yet, right, And so it gets to
32:49
Speaker 1: the point where like these threats are happening, and so
32:51
Speaker 1: she has to leave Pap and the girls, like she
32:53
Speaker 1: has to go right. So she gets moved around like
32:58
Speaker 1: people are sheltering her right house to house, Like they're
33:03
Speaker 1: moving her because she's now a target. So you've got
33:07
Speaker 1: her and people that she's associated with, they're being intimidated
33:10
Speaker 1: or like they're trying to she's being harassed, she's being
33:13
Speaker 1: shot at. There are drive bys they go past the
33:16
Speaker 1: houses that you know, they know that she's been Like
33:22
Speaker 1: her family actually has to evacuate to Tallahatchie for like.
33:26
Speaker 1: And she is more than just a person trying to vote.
33:30
Speaker 1: She was a symbol of the fight against power held
33:33
Speaker 1: by the privileged southern white elites. Right, and this was
33:37
Speaker 1: big news, right, this story is just spreading like wildfire.
33:41
Speaker 1: And she's moving around like ten days here, five there,
33:44
Speaker 1: six here, so on and so forth, like and she's
33:48
Speaker 1: moving so so around so much that like other people
33:52
Speaker 1: are being hurt because people are trying to get to her,
33:55
Speaker 1: so like the Klan and other white supremacists that they're
33:57
Speaker 1: shooting in buildings and other people are being shot. Like
34:01
Speaker 1: two girls get shot and they end up being taken
34:07
Speaker 1: to a hospital, And was it I thinks like the
34:10
Speaker 1: police chief tried to stop them going in and they're like,
34:13
Speaker 1: not a fucking chance. And so they get in and
34:16
Speaker 1: the girls get deal with and they survive and everything's fine.
34:18
Speaker 1: I say, everything's fine, but they're still in the South,
34:22
Speaker 1: and so like she's moving around and so this they
34:26
Speaker 1: manage to get a black activist to her right, because
34:29
Speaker 1: like nobody white is getting near this woman. And so
34:33
Speaker 1: as activist comes to her and tells her that she
34:36
Speaker 1: has to come to Nashville to talk about her community
34:39
Speaker 1: being attacked and people being shot because she tried to
34:42
Speaker 1: register to vote, right, and they're like, you got to
34:45
Speaker 1: talk to the news, and she's like great, packs her
34:47
Speaker 1: bags off, she goes right, So like now she's getting known.
34:53
Speaker 1: And so after the harvest, like Pap is also fired.
34:56
Speaker 1: He loses his job and they have to move. And
35:01
Speaker 1: so the SNCC like they manage to like cover the
35:08
Speaker 1: cost of getting them somewhere to go. So they end
35:11
Speaker 1: up moving to I'm gonna say, like it it's a
35:14
Speaker 1: house when I run and water right and the Hammers.
35:16
Speaker 1: They rent this house on six two six East Lafayette
35:20
Speaker 1: Street in Roeville. So they're there and the SNCAC known
35:27
Speaker 1: as SNICK, like they get a job for Fannilee as
35:34
Speaker 1: as a field secretary. So this is the Student Nonviolent
35:38
Speaker 1: Coordinating Committee, Like they don't have a lot of money
35:42
Speaker 1: at the best of times. But they're like, Okay, we
35:45
Speaker 1: need to do something, and they need to support Fanny
35:48
Speaker 1: Lou because she's now a symbol of this. So they
35:50
Speaker 1: are paying her and they're covering the cost of this
35:52
Speaker 1: rent of this house. So she's earning ten dollars a
35:57
Speaker 1: week as a field secretary. And so she takes the
36:01
Speaker 1: literacy test two more right, two more times before she
36:05
Speaker 1: passes it. So when she does pass it right, they
36:10
Speaker 1: still wouldn't let her vote. Basically, she was registered to vote,
36:17
Speaker 1: but her county required voters to have two pole tax
36:21
Speaker 1: receipts right, So basically there was just another hurdle, right,
36:26
Speaker 1: and it was a way of stopping people who like
36:30
Speaker 1: wear in poverty or wearn't flush, like to prevent them
36:34
Speaker 1: from voting. Eventually, she did get those. She would get
36:40
Speaker 1: those poll tax receipts. As a snack Field secretary for
36:50
Speaker 1: voter registration and welfare programs, she fought to grant federal
36:55
Speaker 1: resources to impoverished black families in the South. And she's
37:00
Speaker 1: gaining fame and momentum. She's traveling around doing talks like
37:04
Speaker 1: she's on the same talk circuit as Martin Luther King Junior. Right,
37:07
Speaker 1: she's giving speeches. She's like a minister at a pulpit. Again, passionate, compassionate,
37:14
Speaker 1: And as her fame grows, so does I suppose her notoriety,
37:19
Speaker 1: and so does her harassment. Right. This shows you how
37:25
Speaker 1: the whole system is out to get her. Because the
37:29
Speaker 1: house that she's staying in right Lafayette Street had no
37:33
Speaker 1: running water, and yet the hem also received a nine
37:36
Speaker 1: thousand dollars water bill. Policemen would storm into their bedroom
37:41
Speaker 1: at night with their guns drawn and without a warrant,
37:43
Speaker 1: and they would just be like, we don't need a warrant, right,
37:48
Speaker 1: And it does not end there. On the ninth of
37:51
Speaker 1: June nineteen sixty three, Fanilu and other activists were returning
37:55
Speaker 1: from a Vora registration workshop by the Southern Christian Leadership
37:59
Speaker 1: Conference the CLC. So this was in South Carolina, and
38:03
Speaker 1: they were on the Trailway's bus and they were heading
38:05
Speaker 1: back home. So now they'd stopped in Winona, Mississippi. Right,
38:10
Speaker 1: So they had they tried to stop a few places before,
38:13
Speaker 1: but they were all like whites, only, no, you can't
38:15
Speaker 1: come in. And so they stop here and they are
38:19
Speaker 1: refused service and a Mississippi State Highway patrolman decides to
38:25
Speaker 1: start intimidating this group with his billy club. And so
38:29
Speaker 1: these activists, being you know, intelligent people, they're like, you
38:32
Speaker 1: can't do this, and so they start taking down the
38:35
Speaker 1: numbers of the officer's license plate, right because always always
38:40
Speaker 1: have a body of evidence, and so this is this
38:46
Speaker 1: is not taken well. And so the patrolman and the
38:51
Speaker 1: police chief who has arrived, arrests them. So when Fanny
38:55
Speaker 1: lu asks if they can just continue on to Greenwood
38:59
Speaker 1: right to do this, lads, can we just go, They're like, no,
39:02
Speaker 1: you're being arrested too. At the county jail, things are
39:06
Speaker 1: gonna get rough now. So if you're not okay with violence,
39:11
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to skip forward like sixty seconds, sixty yeah,
39:18
Speaker 1: just do that. Right. At the county jail, the group
39:22
Speaker 1: we're beaten. Fanny Lou was beaten with the baton, and
39:25
Speaker 1: beatings got worse when she screamed in pain. She was
39:30
Speaker 1: stripped and sexually assaulted by police offers at the county jail.
39:35
Speaker 1: She talks about being groped, and she does not mention
39:39
Speaker 1: anything other than being stripped and groped, but she was
39:44
Speaker 1: beaten so furiously, like in the booking room. This is
39:49
Speaker 1: even before we get into the actual like the jail itself.
39:54
Speaker 1: She's just in booking and these people are beaten, They
39:58
Speaker 1: stomp and they there's fifteen year olds here and they
40:02
Speaker 1: are being stripped, beaten, stomped, right like, she was beaten
40:10
Speaker 1: so badly that it left her with a blood clot
40:13
Speaker 1: over her left eye, severe permanent kidney damage. Right, it
40:16
Speaker 1: is like for the rest of her life she suffered
40:20
Speaker 1: because of this unwarranted attack, racially charged abuse. And in
40:29
Speaker 1: the jail they got an inmate to beat her with
40:32
Speaker 1: a blackjack. A black jack, if you don't know, it's
40:35
Speaker 1: a strip of leather with a metal weight sewn in. Right.
40:40
Speaker 1: She is beaten with this so much that they say
40:43
Speaker 1: that her skin looks like wood or like the scales
40:46
Speaker 1: of a snake. She is swollen, she is beaten, she
40:50
Speaker 1: is scarred. Right, So basically SNICK, they try and send
40:57
Speaker 1: down an activist to get them out like a memo.
41:00
Speaker 1: He gets arrested, and he gets beaten so badly that
41:04
Speaker 1: his eyes are swollen shut. So when the rest of
41:09
Speaker 1: SNICK realized that people aren't coming back from this area,
41:14
Speaker 1: the police right the station. It is flooded with calls
41:19
Speaker 1: right snick the selc like they are going and going
41:22
Speaker 1: and going. And obviously now there's a lot of attention
41:25
Speaker 1: happening here, which is lucky because these officers were openly
41:30
Speaker 1: planning on disappearing them into a river like direct quote.
41:37
Speaker 1: So they are released on the twelfth of June nineteen
41:41
Speaker 1: sixty three, the day after President John F. Kennedy has
41:46
Speaker 1: his famous civil rights address. Right when she's released, her
41:53
Speaker 1: skin is swollen, you know, her hands are practically blue,
41:58
Speaker 1: and like she couldn't move them, and she needed a
42:00
Speaker 1: month to recuperate just to be able to move properly again,
42:04
Speaker 1: not even properly. When she returned to Mississippi, she organized
42:10
Speaker 1: voter registration projects like she was back on it. So
42:13
Speaker 1: these are things like the Freedom Summer Project. She encouraged
42:17
Speaker 1: people to vote, and she wanted to give them something
42:20
Speaker 1: to vote for. So in June nineteen sixty four, she
42:25
Speaker 1: was the first black woman in Mississippi to run for
42:28
Speaker 1: Congress against a white incumbent who'd held his seat since
42:32
Speaker 1: before the Second World War. Right, and for the very
42:36
Speaker 1: first time, she voted, and she voted for herself. Because
42:40
Speaker 1: absolutely so. In nineteen sixty four, Fanny lou Co founded
42:45
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the purpose of which was
42:50
Speaker 1: like to make sure the all white Democratic Party to
42:54
Speaker 1: like to stop it from drowning out black voices and
42:59
Speaker 1: to make sure that there were a party that did
43:01
Speaker 1: not exploit or discriminate. Like she's into equity and equality, right,
43:07
Speaker 1: And so she goes to the nineteen sixty four Democratic
43:10
Speaker 1: National Convention and Fanny Loeu is giving this testimony, this
43:16
Speaker 1: televised testimony at the Convention's Credential Committee. Now it's going
43:22
Speaker 1: out live however, right, However, it's like she's talking about
43:28
Speaker 1: voter restrictions and things like that and the abuse that
43:30
Speaker 1: she suffered, and Lyndon B. Johnson like he did not
43:34
Speaker 1: want this going out. Like so when she's doing this,
43:38
Speaker 1: you know, this very impassioned speech, this is cut off
43:43
Speaker 1: right on live TV. So this is cut off and
43:47
Speaker 1: interrupted by President Lindon B. Johnson giving an impromptu prince
43:51
Speaker 1: conference in the White House and he's surrounded by like
43:55
Speaker 1: governors and stuff, and so he's doing this and he's
43:58
Speaker 1: it's on the nine month anniversary of a shooting, and
44:01
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, it's you know, blah blah blah blah.
44:04
Speaker 1: And he does this completely to distract from this. Now,
44:09
Speaker 1: this Sigurd and Royd trick didn't work quite well or
44:12
Speaker 1: anyway that he intended, because it wasn't just like live.
44:16
Speaker 1: It had been recorded. So the evening, the evening broadcast,
44:22
Speaker 1: So the news networks broadcast Fanny lou Hammer's testimony in
44:27
Speaker 1: phil later that evening, and she was very eloquently popping
44:31
Speaker 1: off about voter suppression and this little little little trick
44:38
Speaker 1: by Johnson just backfiles, right, But that man was an
44:42
Speaker 1: absolute prick, like he's a prick. We know he did
44:44
Speaker 1: to Jackie Kennedy as well, Like he's a prick anyway.
44:48
Speaker 1: So she was such a powerful speaker that she commanded attention,
44:52
Speaker 1: some say even more so than Martin Luther King Junior.
44:55
Speaker 1: Did her activism right, continued to cause problems for her right,
45:03
Speaker 1: and she would be her vast all her life, but
45:08
Speaker 1: she would also have personal problems at home, and she
45:10
Speaker 1: would still be dealing with racial inequality at home. So
45:14
Speaker 1: Dorothy and Jane, her daughter, when she's twenty twenty one
45:18
Speaker 1: to twenty two, she suffers an internal hemorrhage after giving
45:21
Speaker 1: birth to her second child, and Fanny loeu like, she
45:25
Speaker 1: drives her to two separate hospitals and they're white only,
45:28
Speaker 1: and they refuse to see her, and so she ends
45:30
Speaker 1: up having to drive one hundred and twenty seven miles
45:33
Speaker 1: to the nearest hospital, but she doesn't make it, and
45:36
Speaker 1: her daughter dies in her arms because the hospital would
45:41
Speaker 1: not treat her. And this is the nineteen sixties, this
45:46
Speaker 1: is not that long ago. So here's the stats, right, right,
45:50
Speaker 1: The approximate national maternal mortality rate in the USA is
45:55
Speaker 1: seventeen per one hundred thousand. For black women, it's forty
45:59
Speaker 1: three per one hundred thousand. That's more than double. That's
46:04
Speaker 1: fucking wild. So when she wins for office, when Fanny
46:09
Speaker 1: runs for office, like she loses, but she never stops fighting,
46:14
Speaker 1: Like it's so sleeky because a bunch of counties didn't
46:17
Speaker 1: even put her name on the ballot, right because they're
46:21
Speaker 1: like they just did not want her to even have
46:23
Speaker 1: the option of winning. And so she fights it and
46:27
Speaker 1: what do you know, it's dismissed. So she is just
46:33
Speaker 1: like working to try and get more voters. She's trying
46:35
Speaker 1: to do her best, and the Freedom Summer it leads
46:39
Speaker 1: to seventeen thousand black citizens attempting to register to vote
46:45
Speaker 1: right twelve hundred succeed and this led to more racially
46:52
Speaker 1: aggravated attacks. Now, of course, cracks begin to show in
46:56
Speaker 1: the civil rights movements, and Fanny lu championed and integrated
46:59
Speaker 1: culture of society and future. She was a good Christian woman,
47:04
Speaker 1: after all, they exist, they do right. Some people, you know,
47:09
Speaker 1: take compassion and joy and love for all mankind from
47:13
Speaker 1: their faith. Some people use it to be abusive. Fanny
47:17
Speaker 1: Lou was not one of those people. She was kind
47:20
Speaker 1: and good and right. So she didn't believe in an abortion.
47:27
Speaker 1: She didn't believe in it. I mean, as someone whose
47:29
Speaker 1: rights were taken from her, I can understand. And because
47:31
Speaker 1: of her religious beliefs, like again, feel right to her opinion.
47:35
Speaker 1: All you'r afraid faves are problematic. I like, that's a thing.
47:38
Speaker 1: That's just who she was, and I respect her for
47:40
Speaker 1: her opinion. But that's and people think it's some sort
47:43
Speaker 1: of catchual when you go, oh, well, they have this
47:45
Speaker 1: one thing that you disagree on, and I'm like, yeah,
47:48
Speaker 1: that's fine to have one disagreement when you're doing all
47:52
Speaker 1: this good. Because people aren't one hundred percent perfect, you
47:57
Speaker 1: know what I mean. You're allowed to have a little flaw,
48:00
Speaker 1: you know. And I think in the society that you
48:04
Speaker 1: grew up in, when things like choice are taken away
48:06
Speaker 1: from you, it's very easy to see something else, to
48:10
Speaker 1: have that perspective on it. So here's here's my okay,
48:13
Speaker 1: I have to share this actually, So she actually gets
48:15
Speaker 1: out to see the world and her eyes are opened
48:17
Speaker 1: up because Harry Belafonte, right, he manages to raise the
48:22
Speaker 1: funds to send Fanny Luheimer and a bunch of other
48:25
Speaker 1: people to Ghana in Africa for a few weeks. And
48:29
Speaker 1: this is a woman who lived a life of oppression
48:31
Speaker 1: and suppression under a white rolling class, right, and there
48:36
Speaker 1: she was seeing an entire nation of black people just
48:39
Speaker 1: living full lives. The president of Ghana personally visited her.
48:45
Speaker 1: When the president of her own nation actively avoided her, right,
48:50
Speaker 1: she was consistently dismissed. And here was the president of
48:54
Speaker 1: an African nation coming to see her. And this trip
48:59
Speaker 1: really inspired her, like it gave a connection to a
49:03
Speaker 1: community and heritage that she didn't know that she could
49:07
Speaker 1: feel or that she was going to be connected to.
49:10
Speaker 1: There were songs that reminded her of her grandmother. There
49:13
Speaker 1: were just these amazing connections for her, and like she
49:19
Speaker 1: didn't believe in the term African American because she felt
49:21
Speaker 1: that it kept black citizens like referenced as a subjugated group.
49:28
Speaker 1: She preferred black right. So back home, the Voting Rights
49:32
Speaker 1: Act had been passed in nineteen sixty five, which removed
49:36
Speaker 1: a lot of legal upholes of voter suppression. However, and
49:41
Speaker 1: I of the surprise is absolutely no one. This triggered
49:44
Speaker 1: the KKK and other white supremacists into their old play
49:47
Speaker 1: and old intimidation tactics, and violence escalated again. It's clear
49:53
Speaker 1: that Fanny Leu has this uphill battle and she needs
49:57
Speaker 1: to get eyes on the cause and make some noise.
50:00
Speaker 1: And so she and some other colleagues issued a challenge
50:04
Speaker 1: for all five of the Mississippi congressional seats because the
50:10
Speaker 1: claim was that the only reason they were elected was
50:13
Speaker 1: as a direct result of voter suppression. It was what dismissed.
50:19
Speaker 1: It was dismissed, shocking, I know, and they continued to
50:22
Speaker 1: register black voters across Mississippi. Eventually, she is seated as
50:29
Speaker 1: a delegate of the nineteen sixty eight Democratic Convention as
50:33
Speaker 1: part of an Integrated Party. She became an outspoken critic
50:37
Speaker 1: of the Vietnam War, a war in which her son
50:40
Speaker 1: in law returned from with a debilitating disability. So in
50:45
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight as well, she publishes her autobiography. So
50:50
Speaker 1: she also like she keeps going. She's like pure grassroots,
50:53
Speaker 1: community based. She is helping initiate head start programs all
50:57
Speaker 1: over the South, subsidizing the subsidized preschool programs that also
51:03
Speaker 1: provided nutrition to the children attending. With the Freedom Farm Cooperative,
51:09
Speaker 1: she helped raise ten thousand dollars for forty acres of
51:13
Speaker 1: farmland in Wisconsin. Yes of Cheese Festival theme. The FFC
51:18
Speaker 1: attempted to redistribute economic power across groups and black farmers.
51:24
Speaker 1: With the National Council of Negro Women, she helped set
51:27
Speaker 1: up an interracial support program, the Pig Project, for people
51:31
Speaker 1: who could not afford meat. Right, She's all about inclusion
51:35
Speaker 1: and integration in a quality. She's like, oh, you're hungry,
51:38
Speaker 1: let's feed you. By nineteen seventy one, Fanny lou co
51:44
Speaker 1: founded the National Women's Political Caucus and like at this,
51:50
Speaker 1: this is where she makes this statement, this historic statement
51:53
Speaker 1: of nobody's free until everybody's free. Now year later, like,
52:01
Speaker 1: she is hospitalized because they say she's suffering from nervous exhaustion.
52:05
Speaker 1: Now this could easily be triggered from all of the
52:08
Speaker 1: the attacks that she suffered over the years. So in hospital,
52:13
Speaker 1: like she's hospitalized again a few years later, and this
52:16
Speaker 1: is where she's diagnosed with breast cancer and she has surgery.
52:21
Speaker 1: On the fourteenth of March nineteen seventy seven, Fanny Lewheimer
52:24
Speaker 1: died from complications of hypertension and cancer at the Taborian Hospital,
52:30
Speaker 1: Mound Bay, Mississippi. She was fifty nine years old. She
52:36
Speaker 1: was led to rest in her hometown of Ruleville in
52:39
Speaker 1: Sunflower County. Her epitaph read so like on her tombstone,
52:45
Speaker 1: it reads, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.
52:50
Speaker 1: Her memorial service, by the way, was so packed, like
52:53
Speaker 1: it was packed in the raftals that they had to
52:55
Speaker 1: have an overflow service in the Rulleville Central High School.
53:01
Speaker 1: So she was an inspiration to many, especially the disenfranchised
53:07
Speaker 1: in the South. And she's a civil rights member who
53:13
Speaker 1: deserves to be spoken about more. And she does not
53:15
Speaker 1: deserve to be forgotten. Now I wanted to talk about
53:21
Speaker 1: her I wanted to bring her up and I wanted
53:22
Speaker 1: to talk about someone who had suffered medical abuse. Right.
53:26
Speaker 1: That was going to be my point of this week's episode.
53:30
Speaker 1: This week's theme for Women's History Month is medical abuse.
53:33
Speaker 1: And although I will be championing women throughout Women's History Month,
53:38
Speaker 1: I'm also going to be talking about everything women have
53:43
Speaker 1: had to go through. And I didn't want to just
53:44
Speaker 1: limit this to white women because I know that a
53:47
Speaker 1: few people were like I had a few people who
53:48
Speaker 1: were like, are you going to stop talking about Black history?
53:51
Speaker 1: And are the Black History Month's over? And I'm like, no,
53:54
Speaker 1: it's I'm going to try and cover as much as
53:56
Speaker 1: I can. Obviously, I'm one person, so it's limited, but
53:59
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep to talking about different people and
54:02
Speaker 1: hopefully hopefully you'll enjoy it. So please care and sert
54:07
Speaker 1: care and share sharing care and thank you for listening.
54:12
Speaker 1: Oh and recommendation time. Oh my goodness, I need to
54:15
Speaker 1: do recommendations for this week for watching. You know what
54:21
Speaker 1: you should watch if you can. I I was like
54:24
Speaker 1: thinking of something light and so, I don't know if
54:26
Speaker 1: you remember the TV show Sister Sister. It's two twins
54:29
Speaker 1: who were separated at Birth and Adopted And anyway, I
54:33
Speaker 1: really really loved that show growing up. So sister, sister,
54:36
Speaker 1: go watch that for listening. Oh, ky Andrea. K Andrea
54:43
Speaker 1: has a new podcast out. It was recommended to me
54:45
Speaker 1: because I was told it was right off my alley
54:48
Speaker 1: and I haven't listened to it yet. But k Andrea
54:50
Speaker 1: has a new podcast out. It's about forgotten cold cases.
54:54
Speaker 1: It's meant to be really, really good, so I was
54:56
Speaker 1: recommended that, So I'm recommending that to you. And for reading,
55:01
Speaker 1: you know what, you should all read Bold, Brilliant and
55:03
Speaker 1: Bad by Dervla Broadrick. It's just it's also Irish Heritage Month,
55:11
Speaker 1: so read that about you know, interesting women. And with that,
55:15
Speaker 1: I'm going to bid you adieu, adios au revoir of
55:18
Speaker 1: them my friends, Bye bye