Fannie Lou Hamer, a former cotton picker and sharecropper, became a voting and civil rights activist who protested voter suppression in Mississippi and across the United States. On October 31, 1962, escorted by Charles McLaurin and several members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, she made her first attempt to register to vote at the Sunflower County Courthouse. In 1964, she helped the Council of Federated Organizations organize Freedom Summer in Mississippi, later co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and successfully registered to vote for the first time. That year she also declared that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired” during the 1964 Democratic National Convention, which facilitated the Voting Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965. In 1969, she purchased 640 acres of farmland to launch the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi, providing African American farmers with housing, economic opportunities, and collective farming opportunities. In 1971, she joined Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and others to create the National Women’s Caucus and continued her human rights and social advocacy work on an international platform. Despite many hardships and nearly losing her life in pursuit of equal voting rights for all Americans, she stood firm in her convictions.