60 Years Later: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Powerful ‘Is This America’ Speech Still Resonates.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention marks 60 years since Fannie Lou Hamer’s iconic “Is this America” speech at the 1964 DNC.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention is bringing the nation together to nominate a potential first Black woman president. This historic moment arrives 60 years after Fannie Lou Hamer’s powerful “Is this America” speech, where she challenged the seating of Mississippi’s all-white delegation.
At the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Fannie Lou Hamer appeared before the credentials committee to testify about her experiences as a sharecropper in Mississippi, where she was fired from her plantation job for attempting to register to vote.
Hamer recounted the abuse she endured while in jail for encouraging other Black people to exercise their voting rights, as reported by AP News.
“It wasn’t long before three white men, including a state highway patrolman, came to my cell,” Hamer recounted to the crowd. “He told me, ‘We’re going to make you wish you were dead.’
She described the arbitrary tests imposed by white authorities to prevent Black people from voting, along with other unconstitutional tactics used to maintain white elites’ control throughout the segregated South.
“All of this is because we want to register and become first-class citizens,” Hamer told the committee.
Hamer attended the DNC as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which played a key role in organizing Freedom Summer, a campaign to educate and register Black voters. In response to Mississippi’s whites-only primaries, activists like Hamer established the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the Democratic establishment on a national level.
President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to divert attention from Hamer’s speech by holding a news conference during her testimony. However, the networks later aired her speech, allowing the public to witness her powerful message.
“If the Freedom Democratic Party isn’t seated now, I question America,” Hamer told the credentials committee. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our phones off the hook because our lives are threatened daily, just because we want to live as decent human beings in this country?”
Her legacy continues to influence the modern Democratic Party, with leaders like U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who will speak at the 2024 Democratic National Convention on Wednesday. Thompson, who first registered to vote after Hamer encouraged him as a college student in Mississippi, reflects her enduring impact.
“Our challenge as Americans is to ensure that this experiment called democracy isn’t just for the wealthy or the elite, but for everyone,” Thompson stated.
