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Fannie Lou Hamer, born on this day in 1917, grew up in post-Reconstruction Mississippi in a time of extreme racial oppression and terror.

She grew up working in the cotton fields with her family and by the time she joined the Civil Rights Movement in 1962, she understood and lived how racial justice was tied to economic justice.

She was also a gifted orator and singer, moving people into action. She helped organize the Freedom Summer Project in 1964 to challenge Mississippi’s Democratic Party, which was dominated by white segregationists.

At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, she argued that because Black people were not allowed to vote in Mississippi, the state’s Democratic delegates were not legally elected.

Her speech, which was broadcast widely despite President Lyndon Johnson’s attempt to redirect attention to a White House press conference, brought her to national prominence.