Fannie Was Not Alone: Two Other Women You Should Know - An Introduction to the Fannie Lou
Hamer, Speak on It! Study Guide By WILLA J. TAYLOR
Ella Baker appears alongside Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Frederick Douglass in a mural by Parris Stancell. “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest” by Tony Fischer / CC BY 2.0
A question: how many of you had heard of Fannie Lou Hamer before picking up this study guide?
canon of American history, reduces the accomplishments of many to the names of a famous few. But ordinary, everyday people, yesterday as well You are certainly excused if as today, are the force that you hadn’t. Time has not served drives change. her well. Even though she was a powerful force in the moveWomen – and especially ment for civil rights and the women of color – have often fight to win voting rights for been left out of the larger Blacks, she does not figure narratives of the fights for prominently in most textbooks. justice, and that makes it easy The reductivist nature of media, to assume that historic events and the woefully incomplete are shaped solely by the
people we know of and learn about. With the exception of a few – Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King – their contributions have been relegated to the footnotes and the margins. As we celebrate and uplift the story of Fannie Lou Hamer with Cheryl L. West’s beautifully rendered Fannie Lou Hamer, Speak On It!, it seems appropriate that we also center the contributions 2
