Événement

PATOIS 2024: Fannie Lou Hamer's America

Fannie Lou Hamer's America (60 minutes) (2022)
Post-screening discussion featuring organizers from Women With a Vision and other organizations.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a leader in the civil rights movement, founder of the Freedom Democratic Party in Mississippi, and the organizer of Freedom Summer, a volunteer-based campaign launched in the summer of 1964 in order to register as many Black voters in Mississippi as possible. Known for being sick and tired of being sick and tired and her impassioned pleas for equal rights, Fannie Lou Hamer helped change laws and was very influential in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Besides her political advocacies during the 1960s, Hamer was also a humanitarian, providing clothing, housing, educational opportunities for the poor, and food for thousands through her Freedom Farm Cooperative and Pig Bank.

FANNIE LOU HAMERS AMERICA, a documentary produced by her grand-niece Monica Land, and winner of Best TV Feature Documentary or miniseries at the IDA Awards, is a portrait of a civil rights activist and the injustices in America that made her work essential. Through public speeches, personal interviews, and powerful songs of the fearless Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist, Fannie Lou Hamers America explores and celebrates the lesser-known life of one of the Civil Rights Movements greatest leaders.

Directed by Joy Davenport, Produced by Monica Land