Celebrating Black Disability History

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:58:23 -0500

This week marks the final celebration of Black Disability History! Thank you for all the paws and engagement throughout the month. We hope you continue exploring and learning about these amazing Black disabled inventors, activists, and changemakers—and keep celebrating their legacies long after Black History Month ends.

Spotlight: Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer rose from the Mississippi Delta to become one of the most powerful voices of the civil rights and voting rights movements, and she did so as a disabled Black woman.

Born in 1917 to sharecroppers, Hamer survived polio as a child, leaving her with a permanent limp. In 1961, she was forcibly sterilized without her consent: a racist and ableist practice known as a "Mississippi appendectomy" (a practice used to control the Black population). In 1962, after attending a civil rights meeting, Hamer became determined to fight for Black voting rights. When she attempted to register to vote, she was denied due to an unfair literacy test, harassed by police, and fired from the plantation where she had worked for nearly two decades. The following year, she was arrested in Winona, Mississippi, and brutally beaten in jail for attempting to desegregate a bus station restaurant. The attack left her with permanent kidney damage, vision impairment from a blood clot behind her eye, and worsened leg injuries.

Undeterred, Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and delivered a historic testimony at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, exposing the violent suppression of Black voters and helping pave the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She also fought for economic justice, founding the Freedom Farm Cooperative and helping secure housing and resources for Black communities. Long before "intersectionality" was coined, Hamer embodied it — confronting racism, sexism, ableism, and economic injustice simultaneously.

Sources

Fannie Lou Hamer | American Experience | Official Site | PBS

How Fannie Lou Hamer's disability informed her fight for voting rights

Michals, Debra "Fannie Lou Hamer." National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer.

Sterilization of Women of Color: Does "Unforced" Mean "Freely Chosen"? - Ms. Magazine

Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States