Why activist Fannie Lou Hamer became sick and tired

+ Netanyahu's ideology; guide to difficult 2020 election discussions US Edition - Today's top story: Why civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer was 'sick and tired of being sick and tired' [View in browser]( US Edition | 28 March 2024 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( There’s no telling when exactly civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer became “sick and tired of being sick and tired” of laws and customs that prevented Black people from having full citizenship rights in the U.S. Born in 1917 in racially segregated Mississippi, Hamer was the 20th and last child of poor sharecroppers. She began picking cotton at the age of 6 and was forced to leave school shortly afterward to help her family eke out a living on a plantation. Her meager beginnings didn’t prevent her from becoming [one of the foremost leaders of the civil rights movement]( − nor did the daily racist degradation and often brutal white resistance she and others faced for their attempt to “become first-class citizens.” In fact, as civil rights leadership scholar Marlee Bunch points out, Hamer had “little choice but to fight back.” But instead of achieving lasting political change, Hamer’s lifetime fight left her “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Howard Manly Race + Equity Editor Fanny Lou Hamer speaks out against Mississippi’s racist voting laws on Aug. 8, 1964. Bettmann/Getty Images [Why civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer was ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired’]( Marlee Bunch, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Fannie Lou Hamer became one of the most respected civil rights leaders during the 1960s in part because of her resistance to racist voting laws in Mississippi. 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