The Rev. George Lee Museums of African American History and Heritage
Rev. Lee is considered to be the first person to die in the fight for civil rights for Blacks in America. George Lee's name is the first ones of 40 names listed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Rev. George W. Lee lived and pastored a Baptist congregation in Belzoni, MS. A staunch supporter of civil rights and a local NAACP official, Rev. Lee constantly urged his congregation to register and vote. He knew that the only way to change things for the black citizens of Mississippi, a state gripped in the vise of racism, was through the ballot.
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The Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Museum
Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of a slave and the youngest of twenty children. Her parents were sharecroppers, which is a system of farming whereby workers are allowed to live on a plantation in return for working the land. When the crop is harvested, they split the profits in half with the plantation owner. Sometimes the owner pays for the seed and fertilizer, but usually the sharecropper pays those expenses out of his half. At age six she began helping her parents in the fields and by age twelve she was forced to drop out of school and work full time to help support her family. She spent the next eighteen years as a sharecropper and plantation record keeper.
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