Sick And Tired Of...

"We are sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Fanny Lou Hamer, 1964

In the hush of Mississippi cotton fields, a voice rose—unyielding, unafraid, unforgettable. Fannie Lou Hamer was not born into power. She forged it from the soil, from song, from suffering, and from sacred defiance.

Born in 1917 as the twentieth child of sharecroppers, Hamer’s early life was marked by poverty and exploitation. By age six, she was picking cotton. By twelve, she had left school to work full-time. But her spirit refused to be silenced. She read the Bible with revolutionary eyes and sang with a voice that could shake injustice from its roots.

In 1962, after attending a meeting led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Hamer became a warrior for voting rights. Her attempt to register to vote cost her her job, her safety, and nearly her life. But she kept going. “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she declared—a phrase that became a battle cry for the oppressed.

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She co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, challenging the legitimacy of the all-white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her televised testimony exposed the brutal realities of Jim Crow and moved the nation. She didn’t just speak truth to power—she made power tremble.

Hamer’s activism extended beyond voting rights. She fought for economic justice, women’s rights, and community empowerment. She helped establish Freedom Farms Cooperative, giving Black families land, food, and dignity.

Even now, nearly 50 years after her passing, her legacy pulses through every grassroots movement, every chant for justice, every ballot cast in defiance of suppression. She is the ancestral avatar of civic courage, the mythic matriarch of democratic ritual.

Honor and RAspect

Cynthia Cornelius

CEO and Founder TCXPO