Fannie Lou Hamer, (1917-1977), was the founder and Vice Chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

She led the black delegates from Mississippi to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Hamer was a sharecropper with just an 8th grade education. She was forced to leave the plantation in 1962 after unsuccessfully attempting to register to vote.

Fannie Lou then joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, (SNCC), and became a field Secretary. Late in 1962 she was finally able to register to vote.

Her story is fascinating and inspirational. Fannie Lou Hamer was an ordinary citizen who rose to take extraordinary action.

With the backdrop of this year's 2008 USA presidential election, the complete Fannie Lou Hamer story is one you'll enjoy experiencing in much more detail.

How did one woman, barred from registering to vote in 1962 America, help change the system of segregation in the South?

I highly recommend diving right into This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century), written by Kay Mills.