I am wearing green on Election Day – with the fabulous new skirt from Baiastice. The Flokey skirt has a high waist and a shine that you can see your face in. Does this have much to do with the election? I guess I have the privilege of wearing luscious clothing to vote because women who came before me have won the right for me to vote.
Today is Election Day in the United States. Election Day, for me, is a day to honor one of my heroes, Fannie Lou Hamer. She was the granddaughter of a slave, born to a sharecropping family in Mississippi. She worked the fields starting when she was six, dropped out of school when she twelve to work more hours and married a sharecropper. She was one of many black women sterilized without her knowledge or consent as part of Mississippi’s plan to reduce the black population. Although she did not have much formal education, she was concerned about her rights and attended civil rights meetings in the 50s.
In 1962, when she was 45 years old, she took the bus with 17 others into the county courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to register to vote. This was an action of singular courage because nowhere was segregation more steeped in violence and terrorism than Mississippi. On her way home, her bus was stopped and she and the others were arrested. The land owner came to her home and said they would be evicted if she tried to vote. She left the next day, seeking refuge with friends. Ten days later, the Klan visited the home where she was staying and fired on it.
She began volunteering for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963, she was again arrested and beaten so badly that it took over a month for her to recover. Explaining how she could face such dangers, she said, “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared – but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.”
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