Fannie Lou Hamer’s America: An America ReFramed Special Premieres February 22

Fannie Lou Hamer, the iconic and trailblazing civil rights activist is one of history’s most powerful, yet often forgotten voices. When she stood behind a podium she did not need a microphone to help her command a room, she could do that all on her own. Four years after her death, Fannie Lou Hamer is telling her own story.

When Hamer spoke, it was with such conviction that people felt her power and magnitude. Joy Davenport, director of the documentary film Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, knew it was crucial that Hamer be the one to narrate her own story.

“The overarching goal from the start was that the only person who gets to tell us about her is her,” Davenport said.

Davenport made her directorial debut with this film that tells the legacy of a woman who spoke alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., advocated for women’s rights, voting rights and political equality.

“But she was not remembered with her peers the same way that […] Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered,” Davenport said. “They shared stages and they shared a movement and the reason I think that she was not remembered is because it’s very, very difficult to whitewash what she [had] to say.”

When Davenport first joined this film team in 2008, she knew that Hamer needed to be the narrator of her own story. But the question was: how she was going to do this without interviewing Hamer?

“It’s scary to carry a story like this,” Davenport said.

Davenport took on the task because it was an important legacy that people needed to hear, but she also knew it was an opportunity she could not pass up.

The documentary includes audio clips of Hamer, documents, photographs and interviews. Davenport worked alongside some of Hamer’s family members, like her great-niece Monica Land. Land helped produce the documentary and gave details about Hamer’s life and the person she was.

Hamer was born and raised in Mississippi. It was where she first started picking cotton in the fields. Davenport described how the story was almost told as a poem and Mississippi is a main character. Also poetic is the film’s music, which helps tell the story by invoking elements of harmony and contrasting tones.

The film walks us through the obstacles Hamer faced and how she managed to overcome them with such grace and strength. Every audio clip of Hamer was loud. Loud in the sense that they were straight from her soul. Fannie Lou Hamer had passion and that is not something you can teach.

Davenport felt Hamer’s passion and knew that Hamer wanted people to see and feel it too. She took that passion and channeled it into the movement she helped advance.

“She didn’t have much of a choice except to do something about it because she wanted to make things better,” Davenport said.

Davenport had a special connection to Fannie Lou Hamer through her research and work at the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with Lawrence Guyot. Hamer was a co-founder of the party in which she fought to amplify the voices of Black voters and expose discrimination and exploitation. And Hamer’s fight is still being fought today.

“Everything she said when she was alive remains true and real about our country,” Davenport said.

This film comes two years after uprisings for justice surged in the U.S. after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery went viral on social media platforms. An age when unequal justice seems as common as it was in Hamer’s days.

Davenport wanted to make sure this film had an impact on the people watching it. It was not just another movie, but there were many lessons to be learned.

“I really hope that this film serves to relight the torch that was allowed to go dark,” Davenport said.

Davenport says she learned a lot from this filmmaking process, and also from Fannie Lou Hamer herself.

“There were a number of personal lessons that I took from her,” Davenport said. “One was essentially just to have the courage of your convictions that if you believe something and you know that it’s true, and if you see that it’s the right thing to do, then even if it’s scary or dangerous or even if there’s resistance, you just have to do it.”

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Fannie Lou Hamer’s America premiers at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22 on PBS. And will be available to stream on worldchannel.org, the World YouTube channel and on all station-branded PBS platforms.