Presidents and Fannie Lou Hamer, from Johnson to Biden

How did Lyndon Johnson respond to her in 1964?

Johnson saw the Freedom Democrats' challenge as a threat to party unity before the November election, and he worked behind the scenes to defeat it. On August 22, 1964, while Hamer was testifying before the Credentials Committee, the White House called a short press conference, and the networks cut away to it. The SNCC Digital Gateway calls it an attempt to divert national attention. The networks replayed her testimony that evening. Johnson's allies then arranged the two-seat compromise the MFDP refused; see the MFDP page.

A year later Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, on August 6, 1965, which suspended the literacy tests that had kept Hamer and millions of others from voting.

What did Bill Clinton and George W. Bush do?

Clinton named her in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination in July 1992, and in 1994 he signed the act that named the Ruleville post office for her. The American Presidency Project also records her name in his proclamations for African American History Month in 1997 and Women's History Month in 1999.

Bush signed the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act on July 27, 2006. The law extended key parts of the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. His proclamations for African American History Month in 2003 and for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in 2007 and 2008 also mention her.

What did Barack Obama say about her?

In his speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 2015, Obama named Fannie Lou Hamer, alongside Sojourner Truth, as one of the women who could do as much as any man. He listed her in a passage about the Americans who define the nation's character. The American Presidency Project records three more mentions in 2016: his commencement address at Howard University in May, a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner in September, and the dedication of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture on September 24.

This address, obama.html, was used by an earlier site on this domain. We do not have or republish the old site's files about the president.

What did Joe Biden do?

On January 4, 2025, Biden presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Fannie Lou Hamer, posthumously, at the White House. As vice president he had named her in a 2015 statement on the Voting Rights Act's fiftieth anniversary, and as president he mentioned her in a January 2022 speech on voting rights in Atlanta. In October 2025 her family donated the medal to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Did Hamer ever meet a president?

We have not found a documented meeting between Hamer and a sitting president, and we do not claim one. Her dealings with Washington came through Congress, the national Democratic Party and federal anti-poverty programs.