7 Of The Most Unrecognized Women In Black History

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Fannie Lou Hamer

Coining the phrase, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Fannie Lou Hamer was a voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Hamer stood firm in her religious beliefs, often quoting them in her fight for civil rights. She ran for Congress in 1964 and 1965, and was then seated as a member of Mississippi’s legitimate delegation to the Democratic National Committee of 1968, where she was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.

Hamer died of breast cancer in 1977 at the age of 59. Buried in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi, her tombstone reads ‘I am sick and tired of being sick and tired’.