The 1816 Farmington Meetinghouse in Farmington will host “Fannie Lou Hamer: Is This America?,” a program set for Saturday, July 31st, at Wood Library in Canandaigua.
Fannie Lou Hamer was a giant in the continuing struggle for voting rights. She was a sharecropper in Mississippi in the segregated South. Voting was just one of the rights denied to Black people.
Fed up, and famously “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Fannie Lou Hamer founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 in response to the racist policies of the Mississippi Democrats and struck a nerve around the world when she led an unofficial delegation to the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. The struggle to vote continued into the 1960s and today.
Akwaaba: The Heritage Associates, a Rochester based group of storytellers and reenactors will provide a dramatic reenactment of Hamer, the civil rights activist. The program will take place from 2 to 3:30 pm, and will include narrative interpreters, song, and original footage of Hamer’s life and speeches, followed by a Q & A.
The Wood Library is located at 134 N. Main Street, Canandaigua. For more information visit the 1816 Farmington Meetinghouse website.
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