Fannie Lou Hamer Fighting for the Right to Vote

Forty-four-year-old Fannie Lou Hamer had never known this one simple truth: that she had a legal right to vote. Voting, education, personal safety, justice, Hamer and other African Americans were being denied these and other basic rights. Then, Hamer met up with the civil rights movement, and her life changed. Abandoning the Mississippi plantation where she had spent her life picking cotton, Hamer discovered her true calling. "Every person regardless of their color should have a chance to participate in their own destiny," she said. Laura Baskes Litwin paints a riveting portrait of this natural-born leader, a sharp, funny, down-to-earth woman who struggled and triumphed in the fight for civil rights.