Art is Life is Art: Susan Reep Photo Art

The above collage was done in tribute to what I’m about to write.  I took the photo of the woman on a bus in Mississippi.  The background is a jellyfish from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  I called it Breakthrough, part of my Muse series.   The rest of that series is posted on my art gallery.

Thanks to the blog Creative Every Day, hundreds of people around the world are focusing artistic efforts around the theme of BODY for the month of January.  We can count ourselves amongst the fortunate – people who have the time to ponder such things as our bodies.  Interpreting the theme broadly, I’ve read wonderful posts on the concept of sin relating to women, new life growing within us, and many profound postings.  Such deliberation is useful and good.  It contributes to new insights in understanding us, which lead to understanding the world and our fellow (wo)man, and then perhaps being able to share that understanding.  Paying it forward with deliberation, ideas, and energy that will make the whole a positive force.

But as I said, we are among the fortunate.  In this post I want to pay tribute to the idea of BODY in its most extreme.  I want to write about Fannie Lou Hamer, a black woman who put her BODY on the line, literally, almost every day of her life in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement.  She didn’t have the luxury we have as highly actualized human beings sitting on the top of Maslow’s Pyramid.  She was fighting for us, though – every one of us, every day.  Her BODY was on the line for all of us who believe in equal rights for all.

Born in 1917 on a plantation in Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer had 19 brothers and sisters.  In 1962, at the age of 44, Mrs. Hamer learned  from SNCC, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, that she had the right to vote.  She immediately went to the Sunflower County courthouse to register, and upon returning to the plantation, learned she had lost her job and her home. And of course, she wasn’t allowed to register.

Sunflower County Courthouse today

Being black in Mississippi was about as bad as it got.  I learned a great deal about this woman in 2006-2007 when my granddaughter Ali did a History Day project at school.  She was in the 7th grade and along with a friend, another Allie, spent six months of dedication daily, researching and making a ten-minute video about this remarkable woman for the competition.  (History Day designates parameters for projects – videos can only be 10 minutes long, and every year has a theme.)  The theme for that year was Triumph and Tragedy.  And as their coach, I had to be present when they were working in the tech lab, so I spent just about as much time as they did.  The project, however, is theirs and theirs alone.  I advised.  They produced.

Ali and Allie and I were invited to go to Mississippi to present the video at the Annual Conference of Mississippi Civil Rights Veterans.  It was a life-changing moment.  So many people we’d read about and whom I’d been reading about for many years in studying the civil rights movement with students were in that room.  The foot-soldiers, the ones who had the absolute courage, both white and black, to put their bodies on the line while fighting for the right to vote – the most basic right in our society – were there, along with more well-known names.  Many of the Freedom Singers were there, and wow, could they sing.  And they all did quite literally put their bodies – their lives – on the line.  On one occasion, Fannie Lou Hamer was severely beaten, lost the sight in one eye, and walked with a limp thereafter. On another, she was released from jail because of the intercession of Andrew Young, Martin Luther King’s right-hand man at the time, just hours before she and others were to be released from prison at midnight.  In Mississippi, that meant certain death.  Ali and Allie interviewed Andrew Young on the phone and heard that story first-hand.

But she didn’t quit – her BODY took the beating, but her spirit carried on. Seeing so many of these folks made history real and immediate.  The next picture is one of Ali and Allie in Mississippi with Charles McLaurin and Lawrence Guyot – both on the front lines of the movement.  In fact, McLaurin co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with Mrs. Hamer and later, when she ran for State Senator, was her campaign manager.

My Ali, Charles McLaurin, Lawrence Guyot, and Allie

A photographer from the Smithsonian, who had been part of the movement, was present and he took the next photo.  They asked Ali and Allie to be in this photo as the future of the movement.  Wow.  I can hardly describe how I felt. I won’t even try.

Mississippi Civil Rights Veterans with Ali and Allie

I mentioned Fannie Lou Hamer’s spirit.  She had a compelling singing voice and used it to keep her spirit and the spirits of those around her focused on the positive and the goal.  Eyes on the prize.

While we were in Mississippi, we went to Ruleville, her home town, and visited the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden and Gravesite.  She was known for a phrase that she uttered every day and asked be put on her tombstone: I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Allie, me and Ali at FLH gravesite

I think it’s important that people remember and understand Fannie Lou Hamer.  We need knowledge of the past to improve the present and plan for the future.  We need examples of the sacrifice and bravery with which people met life – things we haven’t been asked to do on that scale.  At least I don’t think most of us have been asked to risk our bodies every single day from birth.

This link will take you to a page from which you can view the 10-minute video.  I promise it’s worth your time.  It’s my page on a national committee to raise money for a statue of Fannie Lou Hamer to be constructed and placed in the Memorial Garden and Gravesite, which is a stop on the Civil Rights Trail.  If you want to donate, there’s a link on the page to NBUF, The National Black United Fund, which is accepting the donations on our behalf.

But what I really want to do is pay tribute to the idea of BODY in it’s most extreme, and to a woman who was willing to risk her body to do what was right.  Fannie Lou Hamer is a real hero.

Tags: CED2010, civil rights, civil rights veterans, Creative Every Day, fannie lou hamer, mississippi, ruleville mississippi

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 3:30 PM and is filed under General, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.