Fannie Lou Hamer

CTL-E-6066 · Person · other · 1917–1977

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07289 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6066.

Fannie Lou Hamer, born Fannie Lou Townsend on 6 October 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, was an African American voting-rights and women's-rights leader. The youngest of twenty children of sharecroppers, she worked the fields from age six, received a sixth-grade education, and married Perry 'Pap' Hamer. In August 1962 she attended an SNCC meeting in Ruleville and volunteered to register to vote; she was fired from the plantation where she lived and worked, and became an SNCC field secretary, registering herself in 1963. She survived threats, shots fired into homes where she stayed, and a severe beating in a Mississippi jail in 1963. In 1964 she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and, as its vice-chair, testified before the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention, describing that beating on national television; she also helped organize Freedom Summer. She later founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative and, in 1971, co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus. Hamer died of cancer on 14 March 1977 in Mound Bayou, aged 59. President Biden posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 2025.

The record

• Also known as: Fannie Lou Townsend

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Census Intake Wave 5 — 747 Program, Wave 11; 40-record packet). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Fannie Lou Hamer entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-6066 assigned at assembly. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 3 — Famous Birthdays ABSENT census, readiness rank 1453 (Civil Rights Leaders list). The census supplied the NAME ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — African American Mississippi voting-rights leader; SNCC field secretary and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Vital status: DECEASED — died 14 March 1977, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, aged 59 (Encyclopaedia Britannica). STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Youngest of 20 children; SNCC field secretary from 1962; MFDP vice-chair, 1964; National Women's Hall of Fame inductee, 1993; posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, 4 January 2025 (Britannica; Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16). VIDEO NEAR-MISS: a CTL Short on Hamer exists in the Revolution series (#204, published 2026-10-16), but the governing Shorts Link Map snapshot of 2026-10-15 does not carry that row, so the video slot stays HELD under catalog discipline and no URL is asserted here. MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: Library of Congress photograph of Fannie Lou Hamer testifying, 1964; no file page was read at file-page level in this pass, so no image is cleared — CTL-PHOTO-001; a CTL-created graphic is the standing alternative); chart FILLED (charts/chart-temp-1453-fannie-lou-hamer.svg); video HELD (Shorts Link Map checked by name and variants — no matching-entity CTL Short); audio HELD (no rights basis). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog snapshot of 2026-10-15 (checked by name and varian) | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging.)

Relationships

• Freedom Summer (1964) — initiated
  Hamer helped organize Mississippi's Freedom Summer (CTL-E-5426) together with SNCC in 1964.
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) — member of organization
  Hamer became a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (CTL-E-5421) after her 1962 attempt to register to vote in Mississippi.

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Fannie Lou Hamer' (updated 2 Oct 2026) — born 6 October 1917, died 14 March 1977 in Mound Bayou, Mississippi; African American civil rights activist who worked to desegregate the Mississippi Democratic Party; fired after her 1962 attempt to register, she became an SNCC field secretary and a registered voter in 1963 — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fannie-Lou-Hamer-American-civil-rights-activist (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, 'Fannie Lou Hamer' — Fannie Lou Hamer (née Townsend), 6 October 1917 – 14 March 1977; vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention; helped organize Mississippi's Freedom Summer with SNCC; co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus; posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 4 January 2025 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer (build store)
• HISTORY (history.com), 'Fannie Lou Hamer' — born Fannie Lou Townsend on 6 October 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi; in 1964 helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and brought the Mississippi struggle to national attention in televised convention testimony; died of cancer on 14 March 1977 in Mound Bayou — https://www.history.com/articles/fannie-lou-hamer (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6066 · Combined Graph record U-07289 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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