Fannie Lou Hamer honored with Presidential Medal of Freedom

President Joe Biden awarded Mississippian Fannie Lou Hamer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Hamer was a founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, challenging the exclusion of Black voices in the political system.

She also laid the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Hamer was born in Montgomery County in Central Mississippi, dying in 1977 in Mound Bayou.