ArtsEmerson is hosting a screening of Joy Davenport’s documentary “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America.”
Fannie Lou Hamer was a leader in the civil rights movement and founder of the Freedom Democratic Party in Mississippi. She was also the organizer of Freedom Summer, a volunteer-based campaign launched in the summer of 1964 in order to register as many Black voters in Mississippi as possible. Following her passing in 1977 she was included in the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
In the documentary, Hamer tells her story in “her own words” through the use of audio and video clips of her many speeches.
At the 1964 Democratic Convention where she represented the party she founded she said, “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?”