A 55 minutes 57 seconds Building Bridges Special for Womenâs History Month
Fannie Lou Hamer: Her Song on the Road to Freedom, a one woman play written, performed and song by the magnificent MZuri Moyo Aimbaye.
Fannie Lou Hamer started picking cotton at age six and was forced to leave school at 12 to work full time. Rather than defeat her this would strengthen her resolve for the empowerment of her people and foretold her becoming the mother of the voting rights movement in the Mississippi Delta. Her courageous struggle for the right to vote was filled with danger and sacrifice. She lost her livelihood on the plantation she worked on and she would then lose her home. There were constant threats on her life, she was jailed, and brutality beaten.
But she did win her right to vote and then went on to co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and challenge the political power of the all-white Dixiecrats. Hamer helped organized Mississippi's Freedom Summer along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus, created to recruit, train, and support women to seek election. She lost her life to breast cancer at age 59 but her spirit is eternal.
produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash
please notify us if you plan to broadcast this 55:56 radio program - knash@igc.org