Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917, the 20th child of Lou Ella and James Lee Townsend, sharecroppers east of the Mississippi Delta. She first joined her family in the cotton fields at the age of six.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a force to be reckoned with. Enduring intractable racism, police beatings, and even forced sterilization, she never stopped working for equal voting rights for all.