GALLOWAY, N.J. — On Tuesday, October 7, students, faculty, and community affiliates gathered at Stockton’s Performing Arts Center to celebrate the 22nd annual Fannie Lou Hamer Human and Civil Rights Symposium hosted by the Unified Black Students Society (UBSS). Ras Baraka, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, attended as the event’s keynote speaker,.
Fannie Lou Hamer, the activist whom Stockton named the Atlantic City campus’ Event Room after, was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi on October 6, 1917. Hamer joined her parents in sharecropping cotton by age six and left school for full-time work just six years later. In 1961, Hamer was rendered sterilized when a white doctor performed a nonconsensual hysterectomy. That same summer, she began attending civil rights meetings with Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer, James Forman. By 1962, Hamer was an SNCC organizer herself. Hamer continued to advocate tirelessly for Black autonomy and voting rights until her untimely death on March 14, 1977.
“We are the only institution that has been lifting up the name of Fannie Lou Hamer for this long in the name of civil rights and social justice,” announced the moderator, Dr. Donnetrice C. Allison. She serves as Stockton’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, a Professor of Communication Studies and Africana Studies. Allison prefaced the upcoming performances by stating, “Something else that we have been doing over these 22 years has been making sure to incorporate the arts in this program. Fannie Lou Hamer loved to sing. There’s a very, very important history with the Black arts movement and how that has been a part of speaking up and speaking out and using the arts as a way to do that.”
Led by music professor Dr. Beverly Vaughn, the Freedom Singers opened with a selection of Hamer’s favorite songs. Freedom Singers member, Lilly Nickens, captured the audience with a moving rendition of the Black National Anthem. Kiana Bryan, psychology major, Africana studies minor, and owner of Black Essence Performing Artists dance company, followed with a ballet performance of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.”…