Author Jacqueline Hamer Flakes, the daughter of late civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, has passed away at age 56.
The official website of the award-winning film “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America” confirmed on Twitter that Flakes died on Monday. “It is with an extremely heavy heart that we have to report that Jacqueline “Cookie” Hamer Flakes passed away today. She was 56. Jackie was the last living child of Pap and Fannie Lou Hamer,” the tweet reads.
Flakes reportedly battled breast cancer for years.
In the 2022 book, “Mama Fannie: Growing Up the Daughter of Civil Rights Icon Fannie Lou Hamer,” Flakes discloses various intimate accounts of Hamer’s impact nationally and locally. One she shared with the Pittsburgh City Paper in a January interview to promote both the book and a speaking engagement in that Pennsylvania city. “If you needed anything, she was going to get it for you,” Flakes said. “She was a great mother. You would think it would be hard for her adopting four girls. But it wasn’t hard for her. It came so naturally to her.”
Hamer could not have biological children after a rural doctor gave her a complete hysterectomy without her consent during an operation to remove a uterine (fibroid) tumor, theGrio reported.
“She didn’t even know it was done to her until one of her cousins said that’s what they did to Black women in order to keep them in the fields,” Flakes told the Pittsburgh City Paper.
Hamer often spoke of her daughters during public calls for better education and living conditions in the Mississippi Delta. Flakes accompanied her mother when she traveled for speaking engagements related to voting rights or to sing at events with fellow civil rights activists.
Flakes disclosed to the Pittsburgh City Paper that Martin Luther King Jr. did not like to follow her mother after she performed because of her powerful presence as a speaker and vocalist. “He would ask them to let him go first because he knew she was going to take the show.”
As a young child, Flakes witnessed her mother’s voting rights efforts and the struggle to register voters. This struggle informed Flakes’ views on politics as an adult. In the 1960s, Hamer — and other activists — was viciously beaten to the point where “she thought she was going to die” for helping Blacks throughout the Delta register and vote, said Flakes.
Speaking to The Seattle Times earlier this month, Flakes — who served two years as city clerk in Ruleville, Mississippi — said younger generations take this part of Black history for granted and during a time when Black history is being banned in many schools.
“How can you complain about what’s going on in the world if you’re not a registered voter? Some may say I don’t want to hear about the past, that was then and this is now. Well the past is connected to the present.”
Fannie Lou Hamer died in 1977 when Flakes was only 9. Until her death, she raised Flakes in Ruleville, with the child’s older sister Lenora, both of whom she adopted to prevent them from being separated. She and her husband Perry “Pap” Hamer gave Flakes the nickname Cookie, according to the Pittsburgh City Paper.
“People ask me how do I remember all that when I was such a young girl,” Flakes told The Times. “I think it’s because those were the good times for me, the good days. I just enjoyed being around family and doing the things we did and seeing the things that she did.”
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