[10][11][12] Hamer continued to develop her reading and interpretation skills in Bible study at her church;[7] in later years Lawrence Guyot admired her ability to connect "the biblical exhortations for liberation and [the struggle for civil rights] any time that she wanted to and move in and out to any frames of reference".

[17] She heard leaders of the local movement speak at annual Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) conferences, held in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

She traveled to gather signatures for petitions to attempt to be granted federal resources for impoverished black families across the South.

[11] The next day, Hamer and her family evacuated to nearby Tallahatchie County[9] for three months, fearing retaliation by the Ku Klux Klan because she had attempted to vote.

The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.On June 9, 1963, Hamer was returning from a voter registration workshop by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Charleston, South Carolina.

One of the group decided to take down the officer's license plate number; while doing so the patrolman and a police chief entered the cafe and arrested the party.

[9][25] Once in county jail, Hamer's colleagues were beaten by the police in the booking room (including 15-year-old June Johnson, for not addressing officers as "sir").

When she attempted to resist, she stated an officer, "walked over, took my dress, pulled it up over my shoulders, leaving my body exposed to five men".

[35] An activist from SNCC came the next day to see if he could help but was beaten until his eyes were swollen shut when he did not address an officer in the expected deferential manner.

[23] Though the incident left profound physical and psychological effects, including a blood clot over her left eye and permanent damage on one of her kidneys,[37] Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the 1963 Freedom Ballot, a mock election, and the Freedom Summer initiative the following year.

She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature.

In addition to her "Northern" guests, Hamer played host to Tuskegee University student activists Sammy Younge Jr. and Wendell Paris.

[40][9] Following the founding of the MFDP, Hamer and other activists traveled to the 1964 Democratic National Convention to stand as the official delegation from the state of Mississippi.

[45] Moreover, Hamer was a short and stocky poor black woman with a deep southern accent, which gave rise to ridicule in the minds of many in her audiences.

"[45] In 1964, Hamer received an honorary degree from Tougaloo College, much to the dismay of a group of black intellectuals who thought she was undeserving of such an honor because she was "unlettered".

[45] On the other hand, Hamer had supporters including Ella Baker, Bob Moses, Charles McLaurin, and Malcolm X who believed in her story and in her ability to speak.

[45] Woven into her speeches was a deep level of confidence, biblical knowledge, and even comedy in a way that many did not think possible for someone without a formal education or access to "institutionalized power".

[45] The Reverend Edwin King said of Hamer, "She was an extraordinarily good cook of down-home foods...she liked to mix, to make whatever she was feeding people at midnight after they would come home from jail or somewhere else, to fix the perfect spices or recipe for her guest...after she became the orator, she began picking and choosing the spicy parts she'd put in her speeches.

In this respect, 'vernacular' echoes the particularity indicated by the regional distinction, as it simultaneously represents the relationship of power and domination that Hamer challenged through her words."

While highlighting the various acts of brutality she experienced in the South, she was careful to tie in the fact that blacks in the North and all over the country were suffering the same oppression.

[5] She continued to work on other projects, including grassroots-level Head Start programs and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign.

[51] Hamer was a staunch opponent of abortion, calling it "legalized murder" in a 1969 speech at the White House and describing her position in terms of her Christian faith.

[52] In Until I Am Free, historian Keisha N. Blain writes, "Hamer viewed birth control and abortion as social justice issues.

[49] In the same vein as the Freedom Farm Collective, Hamer partnered with the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) to establish an interracial and interregional support program called The Pig Project to provide protein for people who previously could not afford meat.

[51] Eventually, the FFC raised about $8,000, which enabled Hamer to purchase 40 acres of land previously owned by a black farmer who could no longer afford to occupy it.

[59][60][61] Hamer is credited with coining the phrase "Mississippi appendectomy", a euphemism for involuntary or uninformed sterilization of black women, a common practice in the South during the 1960s.

[5] Hamer died of complications from hypertension and breast cancer on March 14, 1977, aged 59, at Taborian Hospital, Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

[76] Additionally, The Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy was founded in 1997 as a summer seminar and K–12 workshop program.

[82] Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School was formed in the Bronx, New York, with a focus on humanities and social justice.

Several students from Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School attended despite a state of emergency declared by New Jersey Governor Murphy due to an impending snowstorm.