Mississippi Today
Fannie Lou Hamer’s last surviving child dies At 56
Fannie Lou Hamer's last surviving child dies At 56
Jacqueline Hamer Flakes, the last living child of civil and voting rights advocate Fannie Lou Hamer. died this week and will be buried April 8 in Ruleville.
Flakes, who died March 27 at the age of 56 in her hometown of Ruleville, had been traveling and speaking about her mother's legacy. She had just returned from an engagement at a museum in Seattle.
Flakes, who had been battling breast cancer, was admitted to North Sunflower Medical Center on March 24 after complaining of weakness.
Ruby McWilliams, who helped raise Flakes and her older sister, Lenora, after Hamer's death, said in a news release that doctors sent her home on hospice and “friends and family were in and out to see her.”
Hamer and her husband Pap adopted Flakes, whom they nicknamed “Cookie”, and her sister Lenora, known as “Nook”, when their mother, Dorothy Jean, died in May 1967 of a cerebral hemorrhage six months after Flakes was born.
The Hamers had also adopted Dorothy Jean, Fannie Lou's niece, when she was an infant and the then-6-month-old Virgie Lee 10 years later.
Hamer, who worked throughout the Deep South as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to help poor Blacks register to vote, died of hypertension and breast cancer in 1977 and Pap Hamer died in 1992.
Flakes attended Ruleville High School and Mississippi Delta Community College. She worked as a relief dispatcher for the Ruleville Police Department and later the Sunflower County Sheriff's Department. She moved to Michigan in 1997 where she also worked as a dispatcher. She returned to Ruleville in 2009 and in 2015 went to work at city hall as the water clerk, replacing her sister, Lenora who retired after 26 years. Lenora died in July 2019.
When Virgie Ree died in 2017, Flakes stepped in as spokesperson for her mother's legacy. In 2021, she was interviewed for the documentary film, “Fannie Lou Hamer's America”, produced by her cousin and Hamer's niece, Monica Land. The following year, Flakes publilshed a book about her mother, “Mama Fannie”, by Concierge Publishing Services.
In June, she spoke in Winona,where a historical marker was unveiled at the jail site where Hamer and several others, including two teenagers, were beaten in June 1963.
Flakes has two sons, Shadney and Trenton.
Visitation will be from 4-6 p.m. April 7 at Byers Funeral Home in Ruleville. Services will be at 2:30 p.m. April 8 at New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church with burial at Mount Galilee Cemetery, both in Ruleville.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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https://www.biloxinewsevents.com/news-outlets-take-court-action-opposing-former-governors-effort-to-shield-records/
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1896
MAY 18, 1896
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation on railroads or similar public places was constitutional, forging the “separate but equal” doctrine that remained in place until 1954.
In his dissent that would foreshadow the ruling six decades later in Brown v. Board of Education, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that “separate but equal” rail cars were aimed at discriminating against Black Americans.
“In the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens,” he wrote. “Our Constitution in color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law … takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
Renada Stovall, chemist and entrepreneur
Renada Stovall sat on the back deck of her rural Arkansas home one evening, contemplating life when she had a life-altering epiphany…
“I gotta get out of these woods.”
She heard it as clear as lips to her ear and as deep as the trees surrounding her property. Stovall's job as a chemist had taken her all over the country. In addition to Arkansas, there were stints in Atlanta, Dallas and Reno. But she was missing home, her parents and friends. She also knew, she needed something else to do.
“I thought, what kind of business can I start for myself,” said Stovall, as she watered herbs growing in a garden behind her south Jackson home. Some of those herbs are used in her all-natural products. “I know when I lived in Reno, Nevada, where it's very hot and very dry, there really weren't products available that worked for me, my hair, and my skin suffered. I've got a chemistry degree from Spelman College. I took the plunge and decided to create products for myself.”
In 2018, Stovall's venture led to the creation of shea butter moisturizers and natural soaps. But she didn't stop there, and in December 2022, she moved home to Mississippi and got to work, expanding her product line to include body balms and butters, and shampoos infused with avocado and palm, mango butter, coconut and olive oils.
Nadabutter, which incorporates Renada's name, came to fruition.
Stovall sells her balms and moisturizers at what she calls, “pop-up markets,” across the state during the summer. She's available via social media and also creates products depending on what of her ingredients a customer chooses. “My turmeric and honey is really popular,” Stovall added.
“The all-natural ingredients I use are great for conditioning the skin and hair. All of my products make you feel soft and luscious. The shea butter I use comes from West Africa. It's my way of networking and supporting other women. And it's my wish that other women can be inspired to be self-sufficient in starting their own businesses.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1954
MAY 17, 1954
In Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal treatment under the law.
The historic decision brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, ruling in the case of student Linda Brown, who was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.
In Mississippi, segregationist leaders called the day “Black Monday” and took up the charge of the just-created white Citizens' Council to preserve racial segregation at all costs.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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