Without Hamer’s knowledge or consent, the white doctor conducting what was supposed to be a minor procedure decided to remove Hamer’s uterus, rendering the activist infertile.

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

The light Hamer began to shine when she walked out of the mass meeting on August 27, 1962, illuminated the way for millions of people, from all walks of life, in the decades to follow.

“The only thing we can do, women and men, whether you [are] white or black, is to work together,” Hamer explained.35 She celebrated the power of each individual action and believed that singular acts of courage would accumulate over time to dismantle racist structures.

directly confronting racial and gendered inequalities was a key strategy to eradicate them. As she carefully explained in her 1965 Freedomways

Baker embraced the organizing tradition, resisted the emphasis on one charismatic leader, and called on activists to adopt a groupcentered model. Baker’s inclusive vision—one that created space for leaders regardless of age, gender, class, education, or race—informed her efforts to help launch SNCC with student activists at Shaw University.18

“We know we have a long fight,” she noted, “because the leaders like the preachers and the teachers, they are failing to stand up today.”37 “I used to have so much respect for teachers and preachers,” she elaborated in the speech. “[But] how, how, how can you actually trust a man and have respect for him [when] he’ll tell you to trust God, but he

“The only thing they could do to me was to kill me,” she later said in an interview, “and it seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember.

Born in Mississippi on October 6,