Le Moyne College Calendar

Fannie Lou Hamer was an improbable trailblazer whose impoverished beginnings in segregated Mississippi gave no hint as to the leader she would become. The life and legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. often overshadows histories of the civil rights movement, but Hamer’s story highlights the power of grass-roots organizing and the pivotal role of women in the fight for equality and justice. By challenging her violent oppressors in Mississippi, she exposed the relationship between racism, poverty, and lack of political empowerment. She confronted the Democratic Party and elite, well-educated leaders of the civil rights movement and reminded them that only by lifting every voice could progress be achieved. Her legacy lives on in movements today that challenge the unfinished business of equal rights and equal access in America. Fannie Lou Hamer – an ordinary woman who did the extraordinary.

Kate Clifford Larson, Ph.D., is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of three critically acclaimed biographies: Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero; Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter; and The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. She has consulted on feature film scripts – including Focus Features’ Harriet starring prize-winning actress Cynthia Erivo. Her award-winning consulting work includes the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, N.Y. Dr. Larson is currently writing a biography of Civil Rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer titled Walk WithMe, due out from Oxford University Press in 2021.

Sponsored by the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, Department of History, Making Herstory, and the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Le Moyne. For more information, contact Tabor Fisher at (315) 445-4256 or at [email protected].