Fannie Lou Hamer Film Part of Mississippi Civil Rights Tour
Tourists will visit Fannie Lou Hamer’s hometown on Sunday, Sept. 29 - a week before her 107th birthday
JACKSON, MS – SEPTEMBER 27, 2024 - For the last two years, the award-winning film, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, has helped to narrate the landscape of the civil rights struggle in Mississippi as tourists visit numerous locations pivotal to that movement including the gravesite of voting rights advocate and humanitarian, Fannie Lou Hamer.
Launched by the Mississippi Centers For Justice (MCJ) in 2018, The Great Mississippi Road Trip takes up to 40 visitors from across the nation on an informative and yet haunting trip through the Mississippi Delta.
At $1,500 per person, with meals and activities included, the Road Trip will start in the state capital of Jackson on Friday, September 27 with a tour of Medgar Evers’ home, now a National Monument. Evers was a NAACP Field Secretary prior to his assassination in the driveway of his home on June 12, 1963.
Tourists from the 2023 Road Trip in front of the statue of Fannie Lou Hamer at her Memorial Garden in Ruleville, Mississippi (Photo courtesy of the MCJ)
Evers’ daughter, Reena Evers-Everette, Executive Director of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, will share with tourists memories and reflections of her father, his legacy, and how it has influenced her work today.
Additional events in Jackson include a brunch at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum featuring Chef Nick Wallace who has appeared on “Top Chef” and “Chopped”; a panel discussion with Evers-Everette, Vangela Wade, of the Mississippi Centers for Justice, award-winning investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell and Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Wolfe; and a tour of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum led by guest historian, John Spann, of the Mississippi Humanities Council.
From there, the group will head to Indianola in the Mississippi Delta to the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, where the iconic bluesman is buried, and Club Ebony, one of Mississippi’s most famous juke joints.
On Saturday, September 28, visits include Greenwood, Money, Drew, Tallahatchie County, Sumner and Clarksdale, all pivotal stops related to the brutal murder of the Chicago teen Emmett Till in August 1955. Locations include Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money, where Till, allegedly whistled at a white woman; the Milam Plantation Seed Barn in Drew where Till was tortured; Graball Landing, the site where Till’s battered body was found in the Tallahatchie River; the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, where his white murderers stood trial and were found not guilty; and the Emmett Till Interpretive Center also in Sumner, which uses powerful storytelling to promote racial healing.
The tourism booklet for The Great Mississippi Road Trip featuring Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers and Mamie Till-Mobley.
As the tour group travels to Ruleville on Sunday, September 29, they will watch Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, wherein Hamer tells her own story in her own words through archival video and audio footage. The film premiered on PBS and WORLD Channel in February 2022, and was produced by her great niece, Monica Land. Hamer’s daughter, Jacqueline Hamer Flakes and her nephew Jimmy Lacey, were also featured in film’s Beyond The Lens segment.
The first location for tourists is the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden on Byron Street, which used to be land on which Hamer fed hundreds through her Freedom Farm Cooperative. Activist Charles McLaurin, who worked with Hamer for several years, is slated to speak to the group.
Aside from being the final resting place of Hamer and her husband, Pap, the Garden is also home to a life-size statue of Hamer unveiled in 2012; a Mississippi Freedom Trail Marker, unveiled in 2011; and other tributary markers that honor her legacy as one of the most powerful voices of the civil rights movement.
From the Garden, tourists will visit Dockery Farms in Sunflower County, rumored to be the birthplace of the Blues; and the legendary Devil’s Crossroads in Clarksdale – the iconic intersection where, according to folklore, bluesman Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his incomparable guitar skills.
Organizers said the annual tour is “an unforgettable journey” that will “guide tourists through the most fascinating corners of the state where civil rights heroes made their mark and pivotal moments in history unfolded.”
Past tourist have said they felt a “sense of pride” when they left the excursion having visited some of the most significant locations in civil rights history, as they gained more insight into the stories, events and music that have come to define Mississippi.