Black Neighborhoods | Day 4 | Have you heard of Fannie’s Freedom Farm?

Day 4

“You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.”

- Fannie Lou Hamer

The Address: 40 Acres, Ruleville, Mississippi

The Story: Raise your hand if you knew that Fannie Lou Hamer started a 600- Acre Farm to feed The People!!

Shut the front door!!! What!

For real? For real.

Fannie was trying to save actual lives up in here. Today, we finna learn y’all.

But before we travel back in history to Ruleville, Mississippi, let’s start here…

What did you eat for breakfast this morning? Where did the food come from? Is it organic or GMO? Was it grown on US soil? Did a Black farmers hands touch it? Let’s talk about it. For Fannie.

We already know that YOU know that Fannie Lou Hamer sang This Little Light of Mine. You can see in your head the Fannie Lou who put her purse on the table at the DNC as she talked about being beaten for registering Black voters across Mississippi.

But Farmer Fannie!?

Let’s turnip (you see what i did there??)!

Ha.

I can’t wait to tell you about her radical work that never gets discussed. Fannie Lou Hamer understood that the most intractable problem facing people in the American South was poverty. She said “I know what the pain of hunger is all about.”

So, with a $10,000 grant, she bought 40 acres of land and created Freedom Farm Cooperative. When it succeeded, she bought an additional 640 acres.

Somebody make me a T-shirt that says “Fannie Fed the People!”

Today, her farm is no longer there.

Let’s talk about why…

In her honor, we pledge to eat better and do better. (Shoot, someone may quit their job, buy some overalls, and move to Ruleville. Hope so.)