HOW LBJ TRIED TO CENSOR CIVIL RIGHTS HEROINE

Today, we pay tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer, an indomitable civil-rights leader and passionate community organiser whose legacy continues to inspire us. She passed away on 14 March 1977, but her fight for justice and equality resonates powerfully to this day.

During the 1960s, Black Southerners came together to organise and resist White-supremacy and systemic violence against African-Americans. Hamer was one of the founders and the vice-chairperson of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a political force created to challenge the racist mainstream Mississippi Democratic Party.

In 1964, in a bid to change things, she gave a powerful testimony to the Democratic National Convention, explaining her hardships and why the Mississippi Democrats needed to reform.

This was televised - or it was supposed to be - until President Lyndon B. Johnson cut her off air during an ‘urgent’ TV press conference. This turned out to be a complete distraction - Johnson merely reminded reporters that it had been nine months since Kennedy’s assassination! That gave the game away: LBJ simply didn’t want Hamer’s words to reach the wider nation.