This piece is to accompany Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and African Americans Face and Fight Obstacles to Voting.Watch the video here.When a group of African-American delegates from Mississippi demanded to be seated at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, the moving testimony by Fannie Lou Hamer made this former sharecropper a national spokeswoman for civil rights overnight.
My 4-year-old daughter Sophia was confused. She looked to me for an answer. “Greyson's not black,” she said. “Her skin is brown.” This was the first time I had heard my daughter bring up the issue of race or skin color.