I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired
Born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, Fannie was the youngest of 20 children. Parents Jim and Lou Ella Townsend had Fannie working the fields as a sharecropper at the age of six and at the age of twelve she was forced to drop out of school so that she could continue to help her family. At the age of 27 the owner of the Townsend’s plantation realized that Fannie could read and write and hired her to be his record keeper. (Mills, 1993) In 1945 Fannie married a tractor driver on the plantation named Perry “Pap” Hamer. After 17 years of marriage Mr. and Mrs. Hamer went to Indianola, to the courthouse to try and register to vote. They failed and on the way home they were stopped and they were arrested and jailed.