BrainPOP and Willamette Professor Partner on New Fannie Lou Hamer Animated Movie

August 21, 2019 – NEW YORK, NY

One of the world’s leading educational companies has partnered with a Willamette University Professor and Fannie Lou Hamer historian on a new animated movie featuring the late civil rights icon.

Working with Dr. Maegan Parker Brooks, an assistant professor of Civic Communication and Media at Willamette, BrainPOP has created, Fannie Lou Hamer, a nearly eight-minute movie featuring the beloved characters Moby (a robot) and an inquisitive teenager named Tim, discussing the life and legacy of the humanitarian and voting rights activist.

“While volunteering in my kids’ classrooms and working with teachers in the Mississippi Delta, it became clear to us that there simply were not enough resources about Fannie Lou Hamer to engage our young students,” Brooks said. “I saw how well young learners responded to BrainPOP movies about other figures in the Civil Rights Movement. So, I reached out to the company to see if they might be interested in creating a Fannie Lou Hamer movie. To my great delight, they were!”

“I had never heard of Fannie Lou Hamer,” said BrainPOP Editorial Director Jon Feldman. “But after just a little research, it was clear that her story would make a perfect BrainPOP movie. It just happened to align with a goal we'd been working toward already: To tell stories from the Civil Rights era that communicate the turbulence of the times.”

A powerfully eloquent proponent of the civil rights movement, Fannie Lou Hamer was known the world over for declaring that she was ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired.’ Having influenced the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Hamer entered politics in her mid-40s and frequently fired up supporters with her exhilarating songs of faith and courage, and her heartfelt call to action. A Mississippi sharecropper, Hamer was nearly beaten to death in a Winona, Mississippi jail cell in June 1963 after returning from a voter registration workshop. Hamer spoke of her brutal experience in an emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City on Aug. 22, 1964. Televised nationwide, and despite President Lyndon B. Johnson’s personal attempt to silence her, Hamer’s impassioned plea for equal rights made her a frequent guest on radio and television broadcasts. Hamer died on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59, after a lengthy illness and complications from the jailhouse beating. She is survived by a daughter.

“I can think of no better way to commemorate the 55th anniversary of Fannie Lou Hamer’s influential speech before the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention than with the release of the BrainPOP movie on our new Find Your Voice website, “Brooks said.

An author of three books on Hamer, Brooks is also the director of the new website, Find Your Voice: The Online Resource for Fannie Lou Hamer Studies, a free and easy-to-access digital platform. Scheduled to launch on Aug. 22, this website will also feature a K-12 Curriculum, which Brooks created in partnership with fellow Fannie Lou Hamer Historian, Davis W. Houck, PhD, and a team of educators from the Mississippi Delta. The site also features an original children’s book, Planting Seeds: The Life and Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, authored by Brooks, a virtual tour of Hamer-related sites, a short film, Find Your Voice, produced by students of the Sunflower County Film Academy and an exclusive behind the scenes look at the-making-of the soon to be released documentary, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America.

“I’m thrilled about the release of this Fannie Lou Hamer BrainPOP movie, and the larger K-12 Find Your Voice curriculum project within which it is featured,” said Feldman. “I am so pleased that students across the country--and the globe--will now have the opportunity to know more about the vital contributions Fannie Lou Hamer made to our democracy. Her experience is such a personal dramatization of the period's injustice and the dangers of trying to fight it. It's the story of the movement's thousands of foot soldiers and forgotten leaders.”

ABOUT BRAINPOP:

A trusted learning resource supporting core and supplemental subjects, BrainPOP’s topics are wide and varied ranging from biographies of scientists, writers, athletes and activists to more crucial events that have altered the course of U.S. history for African Americans. Hamer will be a feature in the African-American collection that also includes topics on: Ruby Bridges, Eloise Greenfield, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson.

BrainPOP is an award-winning educational platform that engages students and supports teachers, with cross-curricular digital content and features from animated movies, coding projects, student creation and reflection tools, learning games, and interactive quizzes to customizable and playful assessments, lesson plans, professional development opportunities, and beyond. Ideal for classrooms, home, and mobile devices as well as individual, team, or whole-class learning, our resources include BrainPOP Jr. (K-3), BrainPOP (available in English, Spanish, and French), and, for English language learners, BrainPOP ELL. We’re used in a third of U.S. elementary and middle schools and welcome millions of monthly site visitors.

View the animated Fannie Lou Hamer movie from BrainPOP here.