Details

Title

Fannie Lou Hamer Singing, March Against Fear, Mississippi

Artist/Maker

Charmian Reading (American, born Canada, 1930–2014)

Date

1966, printed ca. 1990

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Contact the museum for more information

Credit

Purchase with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust and Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection

Accession #

1994.62

On View

Currently not on view

Charmian Reading was a photographer for the Medical Committee for Human Rights, formed in 1964 to support the Mississippi voter registration campaign and to provide public health services in rural areas with limited or no access. Here, she portrays Fannie Lou Hamer, the youngest of twenty children in a family of sharecroppers, who came to prominence during the 1964 Democratic Convention as the leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the all-White regular delegation. Here, Hamer leads a round of “We Shall Overcome,” the closing anthem at most movement gatherings.