Hamer, Fannie Lou (1918–1977)

US civil-rights leader. In 1962, she began work for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she campaigned for voter registration and desegregation of schooling in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She was elected to the Central Committee of the National Women's Political Caucus, when it was founded in 1971.

Born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the granddaughter of a slave, Hamer worked on a plantation. Her growing commitment to the civil-rights movement was affected by her own experiences: in 1961, she was sterilized without her consent, and dismissed for attempting to register as a voter.