WASHINGTON — In one of his last official acts as president, Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 recipients, including a posthumous award to civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, who died in 1977. The Delta native is the 11th Mississippian to receive the honor since 1964. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values or security of the United States, world peace or other significant societal, public or private endeavors. Two others receiving posthumous medals are Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and former Michigan Gov. George Romney. Other recipients of the awards, which were presented Saturday at the White House, are Spanish-American culinary innovator Jose Andres, rock star and activist Bono of U2, former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, entrepreneur Tim Gill, world-renowned ethologist and conservationist Jane Goodall, Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington, soccer super star Lionel Messi, retired basketball great Magic Johnson, fashion designer Ralph Lauren, Bill Nye “the science guy,” businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein, investor and philanthropist George Soros, award-winning writer and director George Stevens Jr. and renowned fashion icon Anna Wintour. Doris Hamer Richardson will accept the award on behalf of Hamer’s family and her cousin, Monica Land, who was unable to attend the ceremony. Land produced the award-winning film “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America” that aired on PBS and WORLD Channel in February 2022. The National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications named the film as the Best Documentary for its 2023 Vision Awards. The production also won the International Documentary Association’s award for Best TV Feature Documentary or Mini-Series. Pap Hamer, Fannie Lou Hamer’s husband, was Land’s uncle. He and Richardson’s father were brothers. Doris Hamer Richardson, the niece of Pap Hamer, Fannie Lou Hamer’s husband. Credit: Courtesy of Monica Land “I have so many wonderful memories of Aunt Fannie Lou,” Richardson said. “It’s an amazing feeling to be here in D.C. to honor her. And I’m so grateful that she is being recognized with this award and that history continues to be made in her name.” “It’s overwhelming to see Aunt Fannie Lou recognized for her sacrifices on behalf of others to this magnitude,” said Land, who is also project director of the Sunflower County Film Academy, a young filmmakers’ workshop for high school students in the Delta. “And this is why our film about her life is so important. It allows a new and younger generation to get to know her and appreciate the freedoms they have because of her.” A vocal proponent of voting and equal rights for everyone, Hamer is remembered as a fiery and eloquent speaker who said she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Numerous political stalwarts referenced Hamer’s courageous stance during the Democratic National Convention in August, including U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Mississippi resident and NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. Born Oct. 6, 1917, Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper with a sixth-grade education, worked tirelessly to help thousands of Black residents in her home state to register and vote. Because of those efforts, Hamer and several others were arrested in Winona on June 9, 1963, while returning home from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina. Hamer and three others, including 15-year-old June Johnson, were viciously beaten at the hands of local law enforcement. The activists were released four days later on June 12.  In December 1963, an all-white male jury acquitted all five white defendants named in the federal complaint. Hamer was also a humanitarian providing clothing, housing and jobs for the poorest residents of the Mississippi Delta – Black and white. She brought the first Head Start program to the state and she launched a Freedom Farm and Pig Bank so impoverished residents could have both fresh vegetables and meat in their diet.  Because of her love for children and having been left sterilized by a white doctor who gave her a hysterectomy without her knowledge or consent during a routine operation, Hamer and her husband also adopted four infant girls whose families were unable to care for them. Their last surviving child, Jacqueline, died in 2023. Hamer died on March 14, 1977, of breast cancer, hypertension and the aftereffects of the jailhouse beating. She was 59. The post Fannie Lou Hamer receives Presidential Medal of Freedom appeared first on Mississippi Today.