Fannie Lou Hamer To Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom
Hamer Is The Eleventh Mississippian To Receive The Honor Since 1964
WASHINGTON, D.C. - JANUARY 4, 2025 – In one of his last official acts, President Joseph R. Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 recipients, including a posthumous award to civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer who died in 1977.
Fannie Lou Hamer
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.
The awards will be presented today, Jan. 4, 2025, at the White House. The ceremony can be viewed live at www.whitehouse.gov/live at 1 p.m. EST and on the White House YouTube page Jan 5. Other recipients include Former U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, actor Denzel Washington and Basketball Hall of Famer Earvin "Magic" Johnson.
Doris Hamer Richardson will accept the award on behalf of Hamer’s family and her cousin, Monica Land, who was unable to attend the ceremony. Land is the producer of the award-winning film, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, that aired on PBS and WORLD Channel in February 2022. Land’s maternal grandfather, Richardson’s father and Hamer’s husband, Pap, were brothers.
“I have so many wonderful memories of Aunt Fannie Lou,” Richardson said. “It’s an amazing feeling to be here in D.C. to honor her. And I’m so grateful that she is being recognized with this award and that history continues to be made in her name.”
Doris Hamer Richardson
“It’s overwhelming to see Aunt Fannie Lou recognized for her sacrifices on behalf of others to this magnitude,” Land said. “And this is why our film about her life is so important. It allows a new and younger generation to get to know her and appreciate the freedoms they have because of her.”
A vocal proponent of voting and equal rights for everyone, Hamer is remembered as a fiery and eloquent speaker who often said she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Numerous political stalwarts recalled Hamer’s courageous stance during the Democratic National Convention in August including Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif and NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson.
Born October 6, 1917, Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper with a sixth-grade education, worked tirelessly to help thousands of Blacks in her home state to register to vote. Because of those efforts, Hamer and several others were arrested in Winona, MS on June 9, 1963 while returning home from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina. Hamer and three others, including 15-year-old June Johnson, were viciously beaten at the hands of local law enforcement. The activists were released four days later on June 12. In December 1963, all five white defendants named in the federal complaint were acquitted by an all-white male jury.
Hamer was also a humanitarian providing clothing, housing and jobs for the poorest residents of the Mississippi Delta - both Black and white. She brought the first Head Start program to the state and she launched a Freedom Farm and Pig Bank so impoverished residents could have both fresh vegetables and meat in their diet. Because of her love for children and left sterilized by a white doctor who gave her a hysterectomy - without her knowledge or consent - during a routine operation, Hamer and her husband also adopted four infant girls whose families were unable to care for them. Their last surviving child, Jacqueline, died in May 2023.
Hamer died on March 14, 1977, of breast cancer, hypertension and the aftereffects of the jailhouse beating. She was 59.