By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
When the time came this last week to present what are traditionally thought of as end-of-term awards, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. rose to the occasion, honoring many substantial people deserving of our nation’s highest honors. On the lists of nineteen recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and twenty recipients of the Presidential Citizens Medal were two of our own icons, hailing from Ruleville and Bolton, Mississippi, respectively – small places, enormously consequential people.
Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County Mississippi, the twentieth child of Lou Ella and James Lee Townsend, sharecroppers east of the Mississippi Delta. She joined her family in the cotton fields at age six. In the early 1940s she married Perry Hamer and worked alongside him at W.D. Marlow’s plantation near Ruleville, in Sunflower County. Hamer’s ability to read and write earned her the job of timekeeper, a less physically demanding and more prestigious job within the sharecropping system. After she attempted to register to vote, Marlow ordered her off his land, per PBS.org. She died of complications from hypertension and breast cancer on March 14, 1977, at age 59, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.
Mrs. Hamer transformed the struggle for racial justice in America. As a founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, she challenged the exclusion of Black voices in the political system and laid the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. More detail on her life can be found at https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-hamer. An award-winning PBS documentary, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, can be viewed at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h2MzXavgEg.
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, per www.whitehouse.gov. On January 4, 2025, her niece, Doris Hamer Richarson, accepted the posthumous award from President Biden, who held her hand throughout the reading of the citation: “The Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded to Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. One of the most powerful voices of the civil rights movement. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hammer spent eighteen years as a sharecropper in Mississippi before learning that Black citizens had a constitutional right to vote. With that newfound freedom, she sacrificed her own safety to organize and register fellow Black voters across the South. Brutally beaten but undeterred, for decades she spoke truth to power to expand political participation and economic rights for all Americans, and left these words echoing in the Nation’s conscience, ‘Nobody’s free until everybody is free.’”
Congressman Bennie G. Thompson stands out in a crowd of honorable people. Humble, direct, and a true servant for the people of Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District and beyond. The Bolton native has degrees from Tougaloo College and Jackson State University. He was inspired by leaders in the Civil Rights Movement and served alongside many of them, starting very young. He was a schoolteacher, alderman, mayor, and county supervisor. He took office as our United States Congressman in 1993 and has been reelected ever since. Among his numerous committee assignments, he became the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee in 2011 and the Chair in 2021. In 2021 he was named Chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
In a political environment where it’s now commonplace for some elected leaders to attempt to defend the indefensible – to fiddle with democracy like it’s a widget – Congressman Thompson and his committee members held the line, despite political consequences. Through complex investigation, volumes of evidence, and eyewitness testimony, the truth of the January 6, 2021, attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and attack on the Capitol was laid bare for the world to see.
The Presidential Citizens Medal is awarded to citizens of the United States of America who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens, per www.whitehouse.gov. When Congressman Thompson’s name was called in the East Room on January 2, 2025, and he joined President Biden to accept the Presidential Citizens Medal – the second-highest civilian award in the United States, second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the reader simply stated, “For his lifelong dedication to safeguarding our constitution.” In a press release Congressman Thompson stated, “I am honored to receive the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Biden. From my time as a student in Mississippi at Tougaloo College to the halls of Congress, including my time as the Chairman of the Select1Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, I have had an unwavering commitment to upholding the Constitution and defending democracy. Throughout my nearly six decades as a public servant, whether on the local or federal level, I have worked to ensure that democratic principles work for all Americans, not just a select few.”
There is something particularly gratifying about Congressman Thompson receiving this high honor in proximity to Mrs. Hamer’s vaulted honor. It’s so authentic, and was highlighted in a June 20, 2022, article in The Hill, entitled, “As Jan. 6 chair, Thompson builds on a lifetime of defending the vote.” It’s something that few other members of Congress possess, and certainly something no other members of the Mississippi delegation possess – Thompson worked with civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. “Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) first landed in politics not to get votes, but to get people registered to vote.”
Some people say that President Biden can’t remember. The truth is – he doesn’t forget!
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