Sixty years ago, at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer told the party and the country about themselves when she was denied a seat on the all-White Mississippi delegation to the convention. A co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, she argued for inclusion in her iconic “Is This America?” speech before the convention’s credentialing committee.
“If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to asleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?” she said.
Hamer, a prominent and powerful voice in the both the civil and voting rights movements, was a sharecropper in Mississippi in the early 1960s with her husband, until she was fired for attempting to vote and trying to help other Black people to vote. As part of a celebration of Women’s Equality Day, the Women’s Museum of California is hosting a screening of the documentary, “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America” at 4 p.m. Saturday at the San Diego History Center, along with a reception and a presentation from the League of Women Voters. (Tickets are $15 to $20.)
Melissa Jones, associate director of the Women’s Museum of California, and Angela Coker, an associate professor in the department of women’s studies at San Diego State University and a member of the museum’s board of directors, took some time to talk about women’s equality, the life and work of Fannie Lou Hamer, and the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris 60 years after Hamer’s famed speech at the DNC. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.)
Q: Women’s Equality Day is recognized each year on Aug. 26 to commemorate the certification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that granted women the right to vote. What’s your perspective on the level of equality that currently exists for women?
Coker: I think that’s a trick question because not all women are the same, right? So, in of women, we’ve got race, sexuality, economic status. You could be an affluent Black woman and you might be privileged in one area, whereas our Latina sisters who are immigrants and have to deal with language barriers, there is a difference. So, I don’t want to just paint a broad stroke, but if you’re going to hold women up against White heterosexual men, clearly we know the wage gap still exists. We are on the precipice of seeing a Black woman, a woman of color, for the first time potentially being voted for president of the United States. That’s exciting. I think we need more women in politics, for sure. We’ve got plenty of women in, and equality for women as childcare workers and individuals who take care of the elderly. We’re heavily represented in those areas, but in key areas like leadership positions, we still have a ways to go. So, we’ve made progress, but there’s still much, much work.
Jones: At the Women’s Museum, we know that some of the struggles that women were fighting for in the past, are still struggles that are occurring today. We have a photograph that is women in San Diego going around on Labor Day (in 1911) with a sign that says, “Equal Pay for Equal Work.” So, over 100 years later, we’re still using that same slogan. In the past couple of years, with the Dobbs decision (the U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 2022 that overturned the constitutional protection of the right to an abortion) and the question of how much autonomy do women have over their own bodies? So, we look at this all from a historical context, knowing that these are issues that women have fought for, for a long time and we’re witnessing it still in the present day. And, we’re here to record it as it happens.
Q: In what ways would you like to see it improve?
Coker: Economics. We know that COVID hit women hard because they were caretakers. The labor of essential workers versus nonessential workers, they had double duty. Labor distribution was all day in front of a computer, if you were lucky enough to have a “professional” job that allowed you to do so, but then we were also caretakers of small children, caretakers of our elderly parents. So with COVID, even though we thought we had some parity in of distribution of labor, we certainly saw that some of the traditional roles assigned to women, COVID sort of exacerbated it a little bit more. I’d certainly like to see more equity around pay in higher education, where there’s still a problem. Whether you’re in a state school or private school, males tend to be paid higher than female faculty, so that’s a concern. I’d like to see the economics be better.
Jones: Our dream at the Women’s Museum is that anything that a woman or a girl wants to do, they should be able to do it. Most importantly, they should be able to do it safely. If they decide to stay home and be a homemaker and be a mother, that’s fantastic; they should be ed and they should have a safe way to do that. Going into the workplace, becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a politician-or the president of the United States-or in any traditionally male occupations. There are more and more women in STEM, but we need to ensure that now that they’re in those spaces, that it is a safe place and a safe environment for anyone who identifies as a woman, that they are seen as such. However an individual expresses their gender and says that they’re a woman or gender nonconforming, whoever they are, they need to be respected and provided the same opportunities as every other individual.
Q: As the Women’s Museum of California was planning this year’s celebration, what was on your list of what you wanted to focus on?
Jones: For us, Women’s Equality Day is not just a day to commemorate the age of the 19th Amendment, but it’s a day to honor all of the individuals who have worked to make this a democracy for everybody and acknowledging that the suffrage movement didn’t end in 1920. The 19th Amendment is a huge and significant milestone in the voting rights movement, but we know that there were many more milestones after 1920, so we want to use this day to acknowledge that work that went on beyond 1920.
There’s nothing limiting in the text of the 19th Amendment, it’s only expansion. It says that no matter your sex, you can vote; but we know that individual states, the way they enacted their voting laws discriminated against certain groups and that there were many more pieces of legislation that had to happen after 1920. In 1924, for instance, all Native Americans are granted citizenship, no matter their tribal affiliation, so it’s not until 1924 that we can talk about the right to vote for Native Americans. In 1943, the Chinese Exclusionary Act is repealed, so immigrants from China can now become naturalized citizens and have access to the vote. In 1965, of course, is the Voting Rights Act, which protects voters from racial discrimination, as well as allowing voting materials to be printed in other languages besides English. So, if you had a preferred language, like Spanish, now you’re able to vote. In 1971, adults aged 18 through 21 are granted the right to vote from the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, so there are other amendments that expand the right to vote after the 19th Amendment. That’s what we mean when we talk about how the 19th Amendment was hugely significant and we should always talk about that and celebrate it, but there were all of these other milestones still to come.
Q: Can you talk a bit about who Fannie Lou Hamer was and how her work is significant to this celebration this year?
Coker: Aug. 22, 1964 is the 60th anniversary of when Fannie Lou Hamer—this rural, firebrand activist, grassroots activist—gave her famous testimony. She recounted her experience of being turned away and having to deal with voter suppression laws in the Deep South, in Mississippi. It was her famous speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1964 where it really put her on the map. How apropos it is that we’ve got a woman of color who’s running for president. It’s just so fitting. I think it pays so much homage to Fannie Lou Hamer’s memory. She was a strong, defiant leader. I just marvel at the courage it must have taken for her as a Black woman. It was very clear what the consequences would be if you tried to to vote. She just had the courage and she was able to galvanize others to do the same. That’s real leadership.
She was born in 1917 and I think she represents her life journey, her commitment, her struggles in rural Mississippi. She represents a lot of the economic struggles that women, that even Kamala Harris is talking about in of her own policies and vision-economic development, reproductive rights. In 1961, Fannie Lou Hamer underwent surgery that she thought was to remove a tumor in her uterus. Unbeknownst to her, she had a hysterectomy. A White doctor (participated in) Mississippi’s eugenics. They called it the “Mississippi appendectomy” because so many Black women were being sterilized without their consent. Her experience highlights the importance of reproductive rights.
Fannie Lou Hamer also talked about economic development. She developed the Freedom Farm Cooperative, which is a real, practical project to help poor families get on their feet economically. She had a thing called the “pig bank” and she would give these rural families little piglets and they’d raise the pigs. It was a way to cultivate agriculture. She encouraged them to plant food for themselves, so that kind of economic development, voting rights, reproductive rights (were important to her). I marvel at how courageous she was for that time, knowing that the consequences could be pretty heavy. Fannie Lou Hamer was a force to be reckoned with.
Jones: Fannie Lou Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer, which went down into the Jim Crow South and helped people to vote. She risked her life doing this, she was harassed and shot at, assaulted for going down and ing people to vote. When you’re thinking about the Civil Rights Movement in the ‘60s, if you’re thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. and you’re thinking about Malcolm X, you also need to be thinking about Fannie Lou Hamer.
Q: What does the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and South Asian woman, mean to you in relationship to the work that was done by someone like Fannie Lou Hamer?
Coker: It says that the dream is still alive, the possibility is still there. Look at Shirley Chisholm—in 1972 she was the first Black woman to run for president. Then, we had Geraldine Ferraro in the ‘80s (running for vice president), and of course, Hillary Clinton years ago (running for president in 2008 and 2016). I think it means that maybe we’re getting closer to having a prominent woman in the White House who can advocate for families, who can be just, of good character, a strong leader. It’s an idea that represents a sense of hope that is still possible in America; we haven’t proven that yet. Her candidacy, for me, represents that there’s still hope and that there’s still decency, and it instills in me a sense of pride that you can have this very competent, ready-for-the-job woman who’s running. The contrast between her and the other person is night and day. I feel proud, of course, as a woman. I have three daughters and it feels good to say, ‘See?’ It’ll feel even better after November.
Jones: I think it’s always really exciting to be living in such a historic time. Sometimes historic times are bad times, but this time it’s really exciting to see someone like Kamala Harris coming so close to finally, as Hillary Clinton says, cracking through that final, hardest glass ceiling. I think, no matter your political affiliations, we can recognize that a country that held people in slavery and then continued to discriminate against them legally and socially, to go from Jim Crow in someone’s lifetime to lead a national party ticket for president is just an incredible evolution, and it shows that our democratic process works. When we allow full participation of it, we get exciting moments like this.
Q: As part of the museum’s program on Saturday, the League of Women Voters will discuss the history of voting rights. What are some notable historic moments regarding voting rights that stand out for you in your work with the museum?
Coker: When I think about voting rights, of course I think about the 19th Amendment and that was specifically around White women’s ability to vote. Black women wouldn’t get the right to vote until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was ed, so we’re talking over 40 years.
I think about Sojourner Truth (I’ve got a picture of her in my office) and her speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” That speaks to me, as a woman of color. I think that it speaks to a lot of women who wonder how they are seen. I see Sojourner as representative of women who might be perceived as “the other,” representative of people who might be “the other.”
We also know that there are also notable women of color who cared about the advocacy of voting rights. I think of Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association. I think of women of color who made contributions, who have not always been out front. I don’t always think of White women and the 19th Amendment.
I think that Fannie Lou Hamer, her life’s journey, is a testimony to many young, poor women, to all women. Think about her being a sharecropper in the rural south, where Jim Crow laws were designed to subjugate. I think her life and the fact that she was so outspoken, too, that’s an interesting contrast, right? That, here she was, this firebrand of a woman who could galvanize. When we think about the Civil Rights Movement in of gender, typically, the men are highlighted. I think, Fannie Lou Hamer, she represents strong leadership, female leadership. She was outspoken, she was defiant, and really determined.
She laid the foundation for many of us ordinary people who could do extraordinary things, even in the face of racism and sexism. Kamala Harris is now on the precipice of being our first female president. How fitting that it’s happening 60 years since the 1964 Democratic National Convention where they refused to even seat her as a delegate, and she was part of Mississippi’s first racially integrated group of delegation , which I think is just incredible. I just want to focus on her leadership and her courage in the face of obvious fear and danger. How many of us have that courage?
Jones: Yeah, I mentioned a couple of key dates after 1920, but something that I don’t think a lot of people know is that in California, we had a California state suffrage amendment that ed in 1911. There were actually two campaigns going on at the same time in the suffrage movement: you had the 19th Amendment, the national movement that was really important because it was saying that all states were going to have this law, but until that got ratified, you had a state-by-state campaign going on. So, it was kind of like a domino effect with states granting the right to vote for women. Wyoming was actually the first state, in 1869, that granted women the right to vote, so we have this huge history. You had all of these different campaigns going on and it was an army of women from all backgrounds. You had working class women, upper class women, there were Black women, White women, immigrants, Asian women, Indigenous, queer, straight-it was just this massive movement for so long. The central rallying cry was, ‘Can we get this vote?’ and it became a central call for the women’s movement because they knew they needed the vote as a tool in order to get all of these other things that they wanted, accomplished. The vote was their voice, so in order to get causes that they cared about-childcare, equal pay, property rights, divorce-all these things that they needed, they needed the vote first. So, you have all of these coalitions of different women of different interests and backgrounds coming together to work on that one cause.
