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
On this day in 1926
Nov. 5, 1926
Victoria Gray Adams, one of the founding members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was born near Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
“(There are) those who are in the Movement and those who have the Movement in them,” she said. “The Movement is in me, and I know it always will be.”
In 1961, this door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman convinced her preacher to open their church to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which began pushing for voter registration. A year later, she became a field secretary for SNCC and led a boycott of businesses in Hattiesburg, later helping found the umbrella group, the Council of Federated Organization, for all the civil rights groups working in Mississippi.
In 1964, she and other civil rights leaders fought the Jim Crow laws and practices that kept Black Mississippians from voting, marching to the courthouse in the chilly rain to protest. By the end of the day, nearly 150 had made their way to register to vote.
Adams became the first known woman in Mississippi to run for the U.S. Senate, unsuccessfully challenging longtime Sen. John Stennis. She also helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. It was time, she said, to pay attention to Black Mississippians, “who had not even had the leavings from the American political table.”
In August 1964, she joined party members in challenging Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention.
“We really were the true Democratic Party,” she recalled in a 2004 interview. “We accomplished the removal of the wall, the curtain of fear in Mississippi for African-Americans demanding their rights.”
Four years later, the party that once barred her now welcomed her.
She continued her activism and later talked of that success: “We eliminated the isolation of the African-Americans from the political process. I believe that Mississippi now has the highest number of African-American elected officials in the nation. We laid the groundwork for that.”
In 2006, she died of cancer.
“When I met … that community of youthful civil rights activists, I realized that this was exactly what I’d been looking for all of my conscious existence,” she said. “It was like coming home.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Vote today: Mississippi voters head to the polls. Here’s what you need to know
Polls in Mississippi will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today as voters make their picks for presidential, congressional, state judicial and some local races.
READ MORE: View Mississippi sample ballot
Voters are reminded to bring a photo identification. This can include a valid Mississippi driver’s license, an identification or employee identification card issued by any government entity of the U.S. or state of Mississippi, a U.S. passport, a military photo ID card, a current student ID card issued by an accredited college or university or a Mississippi voter ID card. For more information on voter ID rules, check here.
READ MORE: Vote Tuesday: Candidates battle for seats on state’s highest courts
Those who do not have a valid ID can vote affidavit, but must return and present a photo ID within five days for their ballot to count. Voters waiting in line as polls close at 7 p.m. will still be allowed to vote. If you vote absentee or affidavit, you can track the status of your ballot here.
POLLING PLACE LOCATOR: Use the secretary of state’s online locator to find where you vote
Stay tuned to Mississippi Today for live results, starting after polls close.
LISTEN: Podcast: Mississippi’s top election official discusses Tuesday’s election
The Mississippi secretary of state’s office offers an online resource, My Election Day, where voters can locate or confirm their polling place, view sample ballots and view current office holders. Those with doubts or questions about their precinct locations are urged to contact their local election officials. Contact info for local election officials is also provided on the My Election Day site.
READ MORE: Mississippi Election 2024: What will be on Tuesday’s ballot?
The secretary of state’s office, U.S. attorney’s office and the state Democratic and Republican parties will have observers across the state monitoring elections and responding to complaints.
The secretary of state’s elections division can be contacted at 1-800-829-6786 or ElectionsAnswers@sos.ms.gov.
The U.S. attorney’s office investigates election fraud, intimidation or voting rights issues and can be contacted at 601-973-2826 or 601-973-2855, or complaints can be filed directly with the Department of Justice Civil Rights division at civilrights.justice.gov. Local law enforcement holds primary jurisdiction and serves as a first responder for alleged crimes or emergencies at voting precincts.
The secretary of state’s office also provides some Election Day law reminders:
- It is unlawful to campaign for any candidate within 150 feet from any entrance to a polling place, unless on private property.
- The polling places should be clear of people for 30 feet from every entrance except for election officials, voters waiting to vote or authorized poll watchers.
- Voters are prohibited from taking photos of their marked ballots.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Senate panel weighs how much — or whether — to cut state taxes
A group of state senators on Monday grappled with how much to slash state taxes or if they should cut them at all, portending a major policy debate at the Capitol for next year’s legislative session.
The Senate Fiscal Policy Study Group solicited testimony from the state government‘s leading experts on budget, economic and tax policies to prepare for an almost certain intense debate in January over how much they should trim state taxes while balancing the need to fund government services.
Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, a Republican from Flowood whose committee has jurisdiction over tax policy, told Mississippi Today that he wanted senators to have basic facts in front of them before they help decide next year if Mississippi should cut taxes.
“We’re getting a tax cut the next two years whether we do anything or not,” Harkins said. “I just want to make sure we have all the facts in front of people to understand we have a clear picture of how much revenue we’re bringing in.”
Mississippi is already phasing in a major tax cut. After a raucous debate in 2022, lawmakers agreed to phase in an income tax cut. In two years it will leave Mississippi with a flat 4% tax on income over $10,000, one of the lowest rates in the nation.
However, the top two legislative leaders, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the Senate and House Speaker Jason White, have both recently said they want legislators to consider new tax cut policies.
Hosemann, the Republican leader of the Senate, has publicly said he would like to see the state’s grocery tax, the highest of its kind in the nation, reduced, though he hasn’t specified how much of a reduction or how long it would take for the cut to be implemented.
White, a Republican from West, said last week that he would like to see the state’s 4% income tax phased out and have the state’s 7% grocery tax cut in half over time.
“We are hoping to construct a tax system that, yes, prioritizes certain needs in our state, but it also protects and rewards taxpayers,” White said last week.
But it’s difficult to collect accurate data on the state’s grocery tax, and state lawmakers must grapple with a laundry list of spending needs and obligations based on testimony from state agency leaders on Monday.
Mississippi currently has a 7% sales tax, which is applied to groceries. The state collects the tax but remits 18.5% back to cities. For many municipalities, the sales tax is a significant source of revenue.
If state lawmakers want to reduce the grocery tax without impacting cities, they could pass a new law to change the diversion amounts or appropriate enough money to make the municipalities whole.
State Revenue Commissioner Chris Graham said the Mississippi Department of Revenue, the agency in charge of collecting state taxes, does not have a mechanism in place for accurately capturing how much money cities collect in grocery taxes. This is because the tax on groceries is the same as non-grocery items.
However, Graham estimates that the state collects roughly $540 million in taxes from grocery items.
The other problem lawmakers would have in implementing significant tax cuts is a growing list of spending needs in Mississippi, a state with abject poverty, water and sewer and other infrastructure woes and some of the worst health metrics in the nation.
Representatives from the Legislative Budget Office, the group that advises lawmakers on tax and spending policy, told senators that lawmakers will also be faced with rising costs in the public employee retirement system, the Medicaid budget, public education, state employee health insurance, and state infrastructure projects.
State agencies, including the employee retirement system, also requested $751 million more for the coming budget year.
“That’s the billion dollar question, I guess,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, said. “How we’re able to fund basic government services?”
Harkins and Hopson said the committee would likely meet again before the Legislature convenes for its 2025 session on January 7.
A House committee on tax cuts has also been holding hearings, and White in September held a summit on tax policy.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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