FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA is a new and original documentary film told through the public speeches, personal interviews, and powerful songs of the fearless Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist.

If you’ve ever heard of Fannie Lou Hamer, odds are you were introduced to her through the heart-wrenching testimony she delivered before the 1964 Democratic National Convention’s Credentials Committee. As significant as Hamer’s 1964 DNC speech was and is, her testimony is but one moment within the activist's career that spanned nearly 15 years and took place before audiences - in every region of the country. 

One of the movement’s pre-eminent orators, Hamer used stories from her own life to call America to account for the racism that defined every aspect of her existence—from the turn-of-the-century cotton plantations of the Mississippi Delta where she was reared, to her death in an all-black hospital in 1977. 

FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA premieres on February 22, 2022 at 9:00pm/EST from PBS.