Mississippi Today
‘Is this America?’ Six decades later, Fannie Lou Hamer gets an answer
Sixty summers ago, Fannie Lou Hamer told millions of Americans watching the Democratic National Convention that 16 bullets came into her home after she tried to vote in Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called a hasty press conference to get television news to cut away from her testimony.
His ploy failed. The evening news featured the sharecropper detailing the violence against her and other Black Mississippians who joined the civil rights movement. “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?” she asked.
On Aug. 22, the 60th anniversary of that testimony, another Black woman, Kamala Harris, is expected to make history when she takes the stage as the Democratic Party’s nominee for President.
This time, the cameras will keep rolling, said Leslie Burl McLemore, founding director of the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute at Jackson State University.
“Mrs. Hamer’s going to be there in spirit,” said her friend, Euvester Simpson. “I know she’s going to be there.”
Two days before Harris takes the stage, a new Mississippi Freedom Trail marker will be unveiled in Atlantic City, where Hamer testified.
“It changed the Democratic Party,” said Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, which manages the Freedom Trail. “It’s extremely appropriate to recognize it at the place where it happened.”
It will be the first Freedom Trail marker erected outside the state.
Sixty years ago, nearly 1,000 college students came to Mississippi as part of Freedom Summer. On the first day of that summer, Klansmen killed three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and buried their bodies 15 feet down in an earthen dam.
Two days later, FBI agents found their station wagon, which Klansmen had burned to destroy all the evidence.
When Schwerner’s wife, Rita, heard the news, she wept, knowing her husband was dead. Hamer held her and comforted her.
Hamer joined Bob Moses, who led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi, and others in forming the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the state’s all-white delegation at the Democratic National Convention. Sixty-eight delegates, made up of everyone from ministers to mechanics, made their way to Atlantic City.
So did Simpson, who sat next to Hamer on the bus ride. A year earlier, she had nursed Hamer’s wounds inside the Winona jail after Hamer and other activists were brutally beaten.
On the trip to New Jersey, freedom songs filled the air, Simpson said. “We all had the sense we were making history.”
She was 18, and Roy DeBerry was 17. They joined other protesters on the boardwalk, and he held up a sign that said, “Freedom Delegation Now.”
“I was a scared kid with a sign,” he said.
Hamer led them in songs like “This Little Light of Mine,” he said. “What was amazing was how connected she was to us and how connected we were to her.”
Dave Dennis Sr., one of the architects of Freedom Summer, said the young people on the boardwalk symbolized the promise of America. “They were making a stand for democracy,” he said. “It changed the narrative of what the country could be like.”
McLemore, who served as vice chair for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, said Hamer’s testimony left many misty-eyed.
“She had the people in the palm of her hands,” Dennis recalled. “We got word that the Credentials Committee would seat the [Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party] delegates.”
But that changed overnight after President Johnson and others “put the screws to people,” he said.
By morning, the plan to seat the Freedom Party delegation had dissolved into a meager offer of two at-large seats and a vow to end racial discrimination in future conventions.
Activists rejected this. “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats,” Hamer responded.
John Spann, who manages the Mississippi Freedom Trail Committee, said, “The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party not only helped change Mississippi; it changed America when it came to voting rights.”
A year after Hamer’s testimony, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which allowed the federal government to intervene when states tried to block Black Americans from voting.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party “helped America realize democracy,” Spann said.
The Freedom Trail marker ceremony is set for 10 a.m. Aug. 20 at the Kennedy Plaza on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk. That will be followed at 7 p.m. with a panel of some of those who were there at the Fannie Lou Hamer Event Room at Stockton University’s Atlantic City Campus.
The panel, co-sponsored by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, hopes to include Dennis, DeBerry and Simpson.
It will be DeBerry’s first time in Atlantic City since that summer. “I’m excited about going back,” he said, “and recognizing the heroes and sheroes who made America America.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
AT&T, union reach deal ending strike
AT&T workers are back on the job today after the company reached a tentative agreement with the Communications Workers of America to end a month-long strike in the Southeast.
The new deal includes a 19.33% pay increase for all workers, and more affordable healthcare premiums.
Wire technicians and utility operations employes get an extra 3% pay increase.
In a statement, CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. praised the solidarity of the striking workers.
“I believe in the power of unity, and the unity our members and retirees have shown during these contract negotiations has been outstanding and gave our bargaining teams the backing they needed to deliver strong contracts,” he said.
CWA district president Jermaine Travis told Mississippi Today that he and his coworkers are happy to be back at work.
“It’s been a long month, so everybody is excited to get back to work and get back to taking care of business,” he said.
Travis also noted the significance of the strike, the longest telecommunications strike in the Southeast.
“I think we’re gonna look back at this strike, at this moment in history, and see it was really important for workers to stand up for the rights and force companies to do right by them, so I think we did a good thing,” he said.
AT&T has also reached a tentative agreement with the CWA in the West.
“As we’ve said since day 1, our goal has been to reach fair agreements that recognize the hard work our employees do to serve our customers with competitive market-based pay and benefits that are among the best in the nation — and that’s exactly what was accomplished,” AT&T said in a released statement. “These agreements also support our competitive position in the broadband industry where we can grow and win against our mostly non-union competitors.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1925
Sept. 16, 1925
“The King of the Blues” was born Riley B. King on a plantation near Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers.
While singing in the church choir, he watched the pastor playing a Sears Roebuck guitar and told the preacher he wanted to learn how to play. By age 12, he had his own guitar and began listening to the blues on the radio. After playing in churches, he went to Memphis to pursue a music career in 1948, playing on the radio and working as a deejay who was known as “Blues Boy” and eventually “B.B.”
Within a year, B.B. King was recording songs, many of them produced by Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records. In 1952, “3 O’Clock Blues” became a hit, and dozens followed.
While others sought to bring change through the courts, King did it through music. The songs that he and other blues artists created drew many listeners across racial lines. One of the biggest fans walked into the studio one day and called him “sir.” His name? Elvis Presley, whose first big hit was the blues song, “That’s All Right, Mama.”
King explained that music was like water — something “for every living person and every living thing.” His smash hit, “The Thrill Is Gone,” made him an international star and led to collaborations with some of the world’s greatest artists.
He survived a fire that almost burned up his beloved guitar, “Lucille,” and won 18 Grammys as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1987, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Both Time and Rolling Stone magazines ranked him as one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
In 2006, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the greatest civilian honor. Two years later, his hometown of Indianola honored him by opening the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. After he died in 2015, thousands flocked to the Mississippi Delta for the wake and funeral.
“Hands that once picked cotton,” the preacher told the crowd, “would someday pick guitar strings on a national and international stage.” He performed till the end, telling Rolling Stone in 2013 that he had only missed 18 days of performing in 65 years. He died two years later at 89 after battling diabetes for decades.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Sen. David Blount discusses tax cuts, retirement system, mobile sports betting
State Sen. David Blount sits down with Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Adam Ganucheau to discuss the push for income tax elimination and how that would affect the state’s budget. He also talks about needed funding for the state’s troubled retirement system and whether Mississippi will soon adopt mobile sports betting.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
The post Podcast: Sen. David Blount discusses tax cuts, retirement system, mobile sports betting appeared first on Mississippi Today.
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