PA SR163

Pennsylvania Senate honors Fannie Lou Hamer on the 108th anniversary of her birth (October 6, 1917) for her civil rights work on behalf of minorities, women, and low-income families.

Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964, which registered 60,000 new African-American voters and challenged Mississippi's all-white delegation at the Democratic National Convention.

Hamer worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizing voter registration efforts in the Jim Crow South, facing threats, arrest, beatings, and gunfire for her activism.

In 1961, Hamer was subjected to a non-consensual hysterectomy during surgery, part of Mississippi's forced sterilization program targeting poor African Americans—a practice she termed "Mississippi appendectomy."

Hamer co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971 to support women seeking government positions and continued community service until her death on March 14, 1977.