Fannie Lou Hamer's legacy, 60 years after challenging Democrats on Civil Rights

Almost 60 years ago, Fannie Lou Hamer took the podium at the Democratic National Convention and made a speech that challenged the party for its failure to support Black Americans' right to vote.

In 1964, when Atlantic City hosted the DNC convention at Boardwalk Hall, Hamer gave a speech that challenged Mississippi's all-white delegation, which refused to grant her integrated delegation seats at that year's convention.

"If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America," said Hamer, a powerful voice of the voting and Civil Rights movements in Mississippi. "Is this America? The land of the free and the home of the brave. Where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America."

On Thursday, exactly 60 years after Hamer's speech challenged the Democratic Party, Harris will address the DNC as the first Black woman and Asian American to be nominated for president.

Hamer's legacy has been one of the consistent themes as Democrats gather in Chicago this week to celebrate Harris and her nomination.

Honoring Hamer

On Tuesday, while Democrats gathered in Chicago to celebrate Harris and her nomination, others gathered in New Jersey to honor Hamer with a new plaque at the Kennedy Plaza in Atlantic City.

"This is the FIRST Freedom Trail Marker anywhere in the country outside of Mississippi," said the city in a post on Facebook. "And we are honored to have it right here in the Great City of Atlantic City!"

The Mississippi Freedom Trail was created in 2011, and its markers are placed in areas that "played a pivotal role in the American Civil Rights Movement," stated its website. Multiple markers can be found throughout Mississippi.

Forced sterilization set Fannie Lou Hamer on path to the Mississippi Civil Rights movement

In 1961, a white doctor gave Hamer a hysterectomy without her consent or knowledge when she underwent surgery to remove a tumor in her uterus, according to the National Women's History Museum.

"Such forced sterilization of Black women, as a way to reduce the Black population, was so widespread it was dubbed a 'Mississippi appendectomy,'" stated the museum's website.

It was one of the moments that led her down the path of the Civil Rights Movement, according to PBS.

“This Little Light of Mine”

Singing became a trademark of Hamer's activism. She would sing spirituals, specifically “This Little Light of Mine” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”

The singing became a unique characteristic of her activism. After she attended meetings hosted by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, Hamer boarded a bus with 17 neighbors to register to vote. Only she and a man were allowed to register, but they could not because they failed the literacy test.

When they headed back, police stopped the bus for being too yellow, according to PBS, and arrested the driver. Police didn't allow the rest of the passengers to get off the bus and Hamer began to sing.

Hamer's other contributions to civil rights

Hamer touched the lives of many as she traveled across the country, delivering speeches on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement.

Some other of Hamer's accomplishments are, according to the National Women's History Museum:

• 1964- Organized Freedom Summer, bringing hundreds of college students together to help Black Americans register to vote in the segregated South.

• 1965- Became one of the first Black women to stand in the U.S. Congress when she and two others unsuccessfully protested the Mississippi House election of 1964.

• 1968- Started a "pig bank" and gave Black farmers free pigs to breed, raise, and slaughter.

• 1971- Helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who is Fannie Lou Hamer? The activist who challenged Democrats in 1964