Sunflower County Courthouse - Indianola, MS

A few days after attending her first mass meeting at William Chapel Church in Ruleville and learning she had a Constitutional right to vote, Fannie Lou Hamer tried to register at the Sunflower County Courthouse in Indianola “to become a first-class citizen.” 

Hamer said when they arrived, they were met by “more policemans” than she had ever seen in her life - an intimidation tactic to keep Hamer and the other 17 would be voters from trying to register. Fear filled the bus until Hamer stood up to sing. SNCC volunteers Charles McLaurin and Lawrence Guyot would later say that was the day they truly became men. One by one they filed off the bus. Only two people at a time were allowed in the registrar’s office, so Hamer and one other took that historic step. 

While she failed the rigged voting test that day for not knowing about “de facto” laws, Hamer was relentless in attempting to register and eventually succeeded in early 1963. 

On their way home from the courthouse, the bus they were traveling in was pulled over for being the “wrong color.” The driver of the bus, Columbus McGee, was initially fined $100. But when his occupants, including Hamer, didn’t have the money, police accepted the $30 they did have. 

When she arrived back at the plantation, Hamer's boss and landlord gave her an ultimatum, go back to the courthouse and take her name off “the list” or leave. Hamer left that same night. 

The current Sunflower County Courthouse, built in 1967, is not the same structure that Hamer visited in 1962. But it remains the seat of local governance for Sunflower County.

In October 2020, a historical marker commemorating Hamer’s heroic efforts to register in August 1962 was unveiled during a ceremony on the courthouse grounds. The event was spearheaded by an associate professor at Mississippi Valley State University and the students in her Public History class.

(VIDEO TO BE ADDED SOON!)