An English professor on the Mississippi HBCU Alcorn State College has sewn a quilt honoring civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.
In an interview with Mississippi At the moment, Professor J. Janice Coleman defined her historical past with quilting and what led her to make a quilt honoring Fannie Lou Hamer. She started quilting when she was round 6 or 7 years previous, utilizing previous cotton sacks on her household’s farm. Lately, Coleman has used her quilts to each have a good time and educate Black Historical past, with the Fannie Lou Hamer quilt being a part of an ongoing lecture collection she’s educating at Alcorn State.
“In the event you’ve spent as a lot time stitching as I’ve, then you could as effectively share it with the scholars and it must develop into part of your tutorial life,” Coleman advised Mississippi At the moment.
Coleman’s use of cotton sacks to quilt holds extra symbolic weight within the Fannie Lou Hamer quilt, as Hamer labored as a sharecropper within the Mississippi Delta. In 1964, Hamer was one of many key organizers of Freedom Summer time, which was a marketing campaign to extend voter registration amongst Black individuals in Mississippi. She was additionally instrumental within the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Get together, which was a substitute for the completely white Mississippi Democratic Get together.
Hamer confronted many injustices in her battle for Black voting rights. In 1962, she was fired from her job as a sharecropper for making an attempt to vote. The next 12 months, Hamer, together with fellow Freedom Get together members, was arrested by law enforcement officials in Mississippi whereas touring residence from a voter registration workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. Hamer was not solely jailed but additionally crushed by the officers, leading to everlasting injury to her eyes, legs, and kidneys.
Hamer’s efforts can be one of many components resulting in the “get together swap” within the ‘60s, as many white Democrats switched to the Republican Get together, as they didn’t wish to be alongside Black voters.
“I feel Fannie Lou Hamer was 5 ft, 4 inches tall. And on the quilt, I wished her to be 5 ft, 4 inches tall. Life-size. Proper? However the quilt obtained longer after I needed to put the writing on the quilt, what she’s saying on the high of the quilt,” Coleman advised Mississippi At the moment.
The quote on the highest of the quilt, “I query America. Is that this America?” was taken from when Hamer spoke earlier than the Democratic Nationwide Committee in 1964.
“If the Freedom Democratic Get together is just not seated now, I query America,” Hamer advised the DNC credentials committee. “Is that this America, the land of the free and the house of the courageous, the place now we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks as a result of our lives be threatened day by day, as a result of we wish to reside as respectable human beings, in America?”
This isn’t the primary time Coleman has honored a legendary Black lady together with her artwork. Coleman’s quilt honoring writer Toni Morrison was displayed throughout the Mississippi Museum of Artwork’s 2024-2025 exhibit, “Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters within the American South.”
Fannie Lou Hamer and Toni Morrison aren’t the one Black girls Coleman intends to honor by her artwork.
“I actually wish to put Myrlie Evers on a quilt. And never a lot as a Civil Rights employee, however as a singer at Carnegie Corridor,” Coleman advised Mississippi At the moment. “I interviewed her just a few years in the past when she was about to show 80, you recognize, she’s 90, 93 now, I imagine. And he or she was speaking about how happy she was that she lastly obtained to sing at Carnegie Corridor.”
Coleman’s work in honoring individuals like Fannie Lou Hamer is really important, because the rights Hamer advocated and actually bled for are below assault by the trendy Republican Get together.
SEE ALSO:
How Fannie Lou Hamer Challenged The Standing Quo
Black Girls In Social Justice
