Educational Foundation Awards New Fannie Lou Hamer Film $2,500 Grant
NOVEMBER 15, 2021 – MERIDIAN, MS
A new documentary featuring rare archival audio and video footage of civil rights icon, Fannie Lou Hamer, has received a $2,500 grant from a foundation dedicated to improving educational opportunities and community improvement in the state of Mississippi.
The Phil Hardin Foundation awarded the film, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, which allows the Mississippi-sharecropper-turned-civil-rights-activist to tell her own story in her words, the grant to help pay for the archival footage. This is the second grant in support of the project from the Hardin Foundation, which awarded a $15,000 grant in 2019.
Slated for broadcast on PBS in February 2022, the film is 100 percent archival and features numerous speeches, songs and television appearances of the fearless Mississippi Delta native who helped thousands to register and vote during the 1960s and 70s. Hamer was also a humanitarian providing food, clothing shelter and educational opportunities for the historically underserved Delta.
“We at the Phil Hardin Foundation are excited about this film because it will help spread the story of a great woman, Fannie Lou Hamer, whose heroic and pivotally important role in the American civil rights movement and beyond is not nearly as widely known and appreciated as it should be,” said Lloyd Gray, the foundation’s executive director. “As a Mississippi foundation, we see this film and its accompanying curriculum for schoolchildren as an educational celebration of the life of one of the most courageous and inspiring leaders our state has ever produced, and as an illuminating examination of the history that still shapes so many of our present-day challenges.”
Lloyd Gray, executive director of The Phil Hardin Foundation. Gray, a former reporter for The Delta Democrat-Times, interviewed Hamer for what is believed to be her last interview in March 1977 prior to her death.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s America is a multimodal project that highlights and preserves the life and legacy of the late civil rights activist. The project also includes a digital K-12 educational curriculum and resource center and an annual young filmmaker’s workshop – the Sunflower County Film Academy – which the Foundation has financially supported in the past.
Founded by Phil Hardin in 1964, the organization’s history is replete with examples of innovative leadership and productive partnerships. In the last 10 years, the Hardin Foundation has paid out more than $26 million in grants to improve student achievement; make educational and enrichment opportunities more available and equitable; increase understanding of Mississippi arts, culture and history; and build community capacity. Since the foundation's creation 57 years ago, their investments toward those goals total nearly $70 million.
Hardin, a Meridian bakery owner, amassed his fortune by establishing multiple bakeries across Mississippi and eventually supplying hamburger buns to McDonald’s restaurants throughout the mid-south region while developing a network of stable and credible national suppliers, including Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, which used yeast to brew beer which Hardin marketed to bakeries as a leavening agent for their bread. Hardin also recognized that his company’s advancement in baking technology was dependent on an educated workforce. It was this interest in education that spurred his creation of the Meridian-based foundation eight years before his death in 1972.
“Mr. Hardin saw education as the most important ingredient for individual and community success, and he also recognized that this meant high-quality educational opportunities must be available to all Mississippians,” Gray said. “These remain the guiding principles of the foundation he established 57 years ago.”