Happy Birthday Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6)

Born and raised in poverty in Mississippi (the youngest of 20 in a sharecropping family), she fought back by demanding the same right that white women were given in 1920 - the vote. She testified in 1964 at a DNC Credentials Committee meeting when demanding the integration of the Mississippi Democratic Party delegation to the DNC 1964 convention and what little the networks covered of it, was pretty much pre-empted by Lyndon Johnson's sudden taking to the airwaves to celebrate the "9 month anniversary" of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. When Johnson was done, her testimony had just ended. What was missed was her riveting account of attempting to register to vote, along with 18 others who were traveling in Mississippi in a yellow school bus that had been pulled over for "being the wrong color".... and included a detailed description of the vicious beating that she and others received while in jail (that left her permanently injured). In fact, she was in that jail when Medgar Evers was assassinated. One of her well-known lamentations was that she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired".

Some biographical info - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/freedomsummer-hamer/

She would have been 98 this year. Happy birthday to the woman who personified what Joe Madison often talks about - "The difference between a 'moment' and a 'movement' being 'sacrifice'". She was the personification of a walking, talking, and hollerin' sacrifice, where her and others' efforts eventually lead to the Voting Rights Act and the integration of electoral delegations that finally happened via rule changes within the Democratic Party at the 1968 DNC Convention.