Fannie Lou Hamer

A sharecropper evicted for trying to register to vote in 1962, Hamer became a field organiser and vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the all-white official delegation at the 1964 Democratic convention. Her televised testimony about being beaten in jail for voter registration work reached millions. The party rejected a token compromise, but the convention pledged to bar segregated delegations from 1968, changing how Democrats chose delegates nationally.