Highland Community College’s Clarence Mitchell Library will offer a program for Constitution Day at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 17 in room H-201 in the Student/Conference Center, 2998 W. Pearl City Rd., Freeport, Ill.
Considering the many rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution in an election year, the topic of voting rights comes quickly to mind. To reflect on that constitutional right, Highland’s Clarence Mitchell Library will host a screening of the award-winning documentary, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America. Working with groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Fannie Lou Hamer devoted herself to fighting for voting rights and Black political representation. Her efforts would mobilize thousands of Black Americans to register to vote.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s America explores and celebrates the lesser-known life of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest leaders through public speeches, personal interviews, and powerful songs of the fearless Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human rights activist. Known for being “sick and tired of being sick and tired” and her impassioned pleas for equal rights, Fannie Lou Hamer helped change laws and was very influential in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Volunteers from the League of Women Voters will provide voter registration services before and after the film.
The screening is free and open to all audiences. The film is 60 minutes long. For more information, contact Laura Watson at 815-599-3456 or laura.watson@highland.edu.