that he decided to make a request for air time so all station would switch over to the president’s news conference instead of listening to Hamer’s speech. Despite Johnson’s plan Hamer was seeing on television and it had a huge affect. As a result of her speech, two delegates of the MFDP were given speaking rights at the convention. However the eleven votes needed to make the MFDP official, did not happen. Johnson had shown his power by influencing other’s votes, he used threats to get the results he wanted. “Mrs. Hamer and her Mississippi comrades were freed by the moral clarity that comes from resisting temptation, freed by their refusal to sell out, from the illusion that the solution to their problems would come from the powers of the political establishment.” Tired and filled with anger Hammer and the MFDP did not comprehend that their work in Atlantic City would help usher in the Voting Rights Act. When the summer of 1968 can around 42 percent of black people living in Sunflower County had registered to vote. This percent was increasing in many counties around Mississippi. Political scientist Leslie McLemore said “The FDP’s Atlantic City performance represented the coming of political age of Black people in Mississippi in a way that had not been seen since Reconstruction.” After 1964 Fannie Lou Hamer’s life represented her certainty that “God’s power—God’s concrete, worldly presence—was with the poor” Fannie, had traveled with a group of SNCC veterans in September of 1964 to Africa. After this trip she returned to Ruleville, Mississippi where she lived. Fannie live there in poverty until she passed away March 14, 1977. Between 1964 and 1977 when she died Fannie accomplished many things. She continued to build black power in the state by organizing Freedom Democratic initiatives. Hamer also attempted to run for public off...
