of these people that hate so—which is the white [American]—read anything about the Constitution? Eighteen hundred and seventy, the Fifteenth Amendment was added on to the Constitution of the United States that gave every man a chance to vote for what he think to be the right way,” she further explained. “And now this is ’64 and they still trying to

acts of defiance to the system of white supremacy that shaped Black life in Mississippi and across the nation.

We want people over us that’s concerned about the people because we are human beings. . . . And we can no longer ignore the fact that we can’t sit down and wait for things to change because as long as they can keep their feet on our neck, they will always do it. But it’s time for us to stand up and be women and men. —FANNIE LOU HAMER1

With few material resources, impoverished Black women and other women of color were most vulnerable to the exploitations of state agencies that worked to uphold racism and white supremacy.68 The birth control movement of the

1917, Hamer was the youngest of twenty children.

Hamer worked to help others

This calling involved filling in the knowledge gaps many Black people had about their rights in the United States as well as eradicating the deliberate misinformation spread by white Southerners. Through the voting education classes Hamer taught for SNCC, she emphasized the “duties of citizenship under a constitutional form of government.”81

At the very moment she uttered those words, Black people were facing rampant acts of white supremacist violence and terror. From the period of 1882 to 1968, an estimated 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States, with Black people accounting for more than 70 percent of the victims.93

The rise of Black educational spaces, including church schools and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), aimed to counter local resistance to Black education.