Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of 20 children, growing up on a plantation and working hard to make ends meet with her family. She knew what it meant to struggle in this country despite hard work.
Hamer would separate herself from her civil rights peers by also placing her focus on economic justice. She realized that there was no way for Black people to really be free in this country without true economic power.
Hamer would see money as a means for the system to control us and poverty as its weapon of choice saying, “If you have a pig in your backyard, if you have some vegetables in your garden, you can feed yourself and your family, and nobody can push you around.”
Standing on her philosophy, Hamer created the Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC), a community-based rural and economic development project with the purpose of addressing hunger and poverty. Many contributed to Hamer’s Freedom Farm, including the National Council of Negro Women, and celebrities like Harry Belafonte.
Hamer used the struggles of her childhood as inspiration to fight for her people, a lesson we should all take with us today in our continued fight for economic liberation.