Civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer’s Presidential Medal of Freedom is now on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

The Medal of Freedom was unveiled on display in the “I Question America” gallery Tuesday by Hamer’s niece, Marilyn Mays, and cousin, Hinds County Tax Collector Eddie Fair.

Hamer, who died in 1977, posthumously received the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025 from then-President Joe Biden. 

It was announced Hamer’s family donated the medal to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History last October.

Mays said there is no better place for the medal to be than where Hamer lived and worked for equality.

“She got national acclaim, but the roots of everything she did, and the motivation for what she did, was Mississippi,” she said.

Michael Morris, director of the Two Mississippi Museums, said Hamer is “a figure of international significance.”

“I hope that our school kids, as well as visitors from around the world … learn from Fannie Lou Hamer this notion of dignity, this notion that every human being is entitled to respect,” he said. He also hopes young people learn from Hamer the power of their voices and the importance of political participation.

“On paper, she doesn’t look like the kind of person that could change the world, but she defies our notions about who superheroes are,” Morris said.

Neither Fair nor Mays realized how significant Hamer was until they became adults, but she became a key inspiration in both of their lives.

Fair said Hamer was a major influence on his decision to enter public service. 

“It was a big influence because I wanted to do something to represent her, to represent the people back in Ruleville, to represent what each and every one of them did to fight to get us to the place that we are today,” he said.

Mays said Hamer inspired her to be part of integrating her hometown’s high school, attend Mississippi State University and enter corporate America.

Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, in 1917. She was the youngest of 20 children, and her parents were sharecroppers. 

In 1962, after attending one of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s voting rights meetings, Hamer and some of her neighbors traveled to Indianola to register to vote. Hamer was one of only two from their group who got to fill out an application and take the literacy test. She refused to retract her application when her landlord and employer found out, which cost her her job and home. 

She became a field secretary for SNCC in 1963. That year, she and several other activists were beaten in a jail in Winona. The assault left Hamer partially blind and with permanent kidney damage.

Hamer continued her work, becoming a key part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in 1964. She co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, even running for Congress as the party’s candidate, but lost the primary to the incumbent Democrat. MFDP went on to challenge the seating of Mississippi’s all-white Democratic delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

While there, Hamer testified to the Democratic Convention’s Credentials Committee about her experiences with racism in Mississippi, including being beaten and forcibly sterilized. This became known as her “I Question America” speech. 

President Lyndon B. Johnson called a press conference at the same time to prevent networks from broadcasting her speech. Despite this, her entire testimony was aired on the evening news nationwide.

Democratic Party officials offered the  MFDP two at-large seats and a promise the next convention wouldn’t allow segregated delegations. President Johnson and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. supported this compromise, but Hamer did not. A group of MFDP delegates was seated at the 1968 convention.

Hamer co-founded the Freedom Farms Corporation in 1969, and continued working as an activist and public speaker until her death in 1977.

In 2022, her great niece, Monica Land, produced a documentary about her life, “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America.” 

Land said the family chose to donate the medal so it could be shared publicly and encourage visitors to learn more about Hamer’s life, legacy and the sacrifices she made in the fight for voting rights.

“I am so happy we were able to gift this award to the museum and to the people of Mississippi,” Land said. “Aunt Fannie Lou loved Mississippi and, hopefully, this donation will spark or further interest in her life and all that she fought so hard to accomplish for all people – not just Black people.’”