Young Shines as Fannie Lou Hamer
NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS September 9 – September 15, 2004
By Linda Armstrong
This summer an inspirational and educational production called “Fannie Lou Hamer: This Little Light…” played at the National Black Theatre on Fifth Avenue in Harlem for two weekends. The one-woman show, created and performed by Billie Jean Young, beautifully and powerfully chronicles the life of the Civil Rights activist and is part of a 1,500 mile journey Young is taking by bus to perform the show all over the country. Young wrote and performed the play 20 years ago and is commemorating the 20th anniversary with this tour, in an effort to share the message of the play, which focuses on the fight that Blacks underwent to gain the right to vote.
The performances were presented by the Rural Development Leadership Network and National Black Theatre. The bus tour, called The Spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer for Human Rights/Civil Rights, is organized by The Drama Project and the Southwest Alabama Association of Rural and Minority Women.
This play was truly a phenomenal experience. Young took the audience from Hamer’s humble beginnings in Mississippi, as the granddaughter of slaves and the daughter of sharecroppers, to her life on a plantation, where she and her husband, also sharecroppers, raised their children.
Young emotionally shares how Hamer, who was stricken with polio and walked with a limp, was tricked into picking cotton at age six by the plantation owner. He gave her a few treats from the plantation commissary in return. From that day on she was expected to pick 60 pounds of cotton a day. As an adult her quota was 300 pounds a day.
The playwright/performer infused the play with love, conviction and determination. She often took the audience from the story to an inspiring Civil Rights or Gospel song, which perfectly fit the part of the story she was conveying. As she spoke as Hamer discussing sharecropping, she sang and acted out “Pick a Bail of Cotton.”
Following a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting in town, Hamer spoke to her husband on the porch about her desire to register to vote. Young was delightful to watch. She performed with such ease that you felt like you were in Mississippi on the Hamers’ front porch on a warm summer’s night, eavesdropping as she excitedly talked to her husband, Mr. Hamer (also known as Pap), about going to town to register to vote.
Young succeeded in clearly showing the passion that Fannie Lou possessed. She gave up her home and sharecropping job to register to vote. When she went into town whites alerted the owner of the plantation she worked on. When she returned he informed her that she could not stay if she registered to vote. Young appropriately sang, “Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” and was joined by the audience. The entire Hamer family left the plantation.
Fannie Lou not only registered to vote, but joined the Civil Rights movement to get others to vote. Her life was often in danger. In one moving scene she tells her husband of being jailed along with others from the SNCC for trying to register Blacks to vote. She was beaten to the point of not being able to feel her skin. When she was released she continued to fight.
Adopting a positive attitude no matter what the trial, the character sang “Gonna Lay Down My Burden, Down by the Riverside.” Young brings out how Hamer lived the 23rd Psalm from the Bible. She went through the valley of the shadow of death.
Young’s depiction of Fannie Lou’s life story leads to the historical moment in 1964 when Hamer addressed the Democratic National Convention and gave televised testimony about the trials and tribulations she endured in order to register herself and others to vote. The audience experienced the unwavering determination of this incredible woman and learned that after her televised speech she was invited to colleges to speak and received honorary degrees in humane letters from several schools.
The playwright brings out how the discrimination Hamer experience din Mississippi was something that the activist realized existed all over America. The audience was encouraged to not want the white man to give them things, because they can take them back. Go out and get them for yourselves. Young ends the play with a tender rendition of “Precious Lord.”
In addition to being a playwright/actress, Young is a poet, activist and educator. She is also author of a book of poems called “Far Not the Fall” (NewSouth Books, 2003), which includes the amazing script to the play.
For more information about the book and play, contact Southwest Alabama Association of Rural and Minority Women at 205-654-2852 or email Young at www.billiejeanyoung.org.
