Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Farm Collective

_{Fannie Lou Hamer presenting at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Warren K. Leffler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine; Restored by Adam Cuerden. August 25, 1964.}

This Black History Month, we’re honoring legendary Black figures in the food justice movement, starting with Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977). Born to sharecroppers in Montgomery County, Mississippi, Hamer worked the cotton fields with her parents starting at age six and later as a timekeeper on a plantation owned by W.D. Marlow until 1962. 

When she became a leader in the Black voting rights movement in Mississippi, she was fired from Marlow’s plantation for attempting to vote.

In the following years Hamer began organizing with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to win voting rights for Black southerners in the U.S.; she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with Ella Baker and Bob Moses in 1964.

_{Fannie Lou Hamer speaks to Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party sympathizers outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in September 1965. (William J. Smith/AP)}

_{Fannie Lou Hamer walks toward the entrance to the convention hall, where she was finally admitted. August 25, 1964. (UPI/Bettmann)}

Bridging her civil rights activism with her background in farming, in 1967, Hamer founded the historic Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC) on 40 acres in Sunflower County, MS, a region with high rates of food insecurity and malnutrition. 

Racial discrimination was common practice by the United States Department of Agriculture during the Jim Crow South. Black farmers were systematically rejected from obtaining loans and subsidies available to white farmers, which forced Black farm owners to lose their land and prevented them from buying new land.

The FFC provided land, growing resources, and livestock through its pig bank (where families were loaned pigs and returned the first pair of piglets to the cooperative to be given to another family), to poor Black families. The FFC fostered financial independence from white plantation owners and built a stronger solidarity network of Black farmers in the region overall. By 1972, the FFC had expanded to offer housing, education, and aid, feeding over 1,500 families.

_{Fannie Lou Hamer (Flower Dress), photographed by Louis Draper, 1971. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. © The Louis Draper Archive. https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2013.43.2}

Learn more about Fannie Lou Hamer’s life and legacy here:

Fannie Lou Hamer | National Women’s History Museum womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1770845974804423&usg=AOvVaw317R0poazIRptWFAZVN_4G 

Hamer’s speech before the DNC in 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EcrotlsH_8

Fannie Lou Hamer | PBS: pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-hamer/

Fannie Lou Hamer founds Freedom Farm Cooperative | SNCC Digital Gateway: snccdigital.org/events/fannie-lou-hamer-founds-freedom-farm-cooperative/

Who was Fannie Lou Hamer? The civil rights crusader who wouldn’t be silenced. | The Washington Post washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/10/06/civil-rights-crusader-fannie-lou-hamer-defied-men-and-presidents-who-tried-to-silence-her/

Freedom Farm Cooperative | Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Farm_Cooperative

This Little Light of Mine by Kay Mills

(PDF) “A pig and a garden” by Monica White academia.edu/31683953/_A_pig_and_a_garden_Fannie_Lou_Hamer_and_the_Freedom_Farms_Cooperative

This is the first in a series of three posts celebrating legendary Black figures in the food justice movement as part of Black History Month and The United Nations’ designation of 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer. Check back soon for more posts about more incredible people!