A looming statue of Fannie Lou Hamer is displayed prominently in the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, Miss., Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017, as a tribute honoring the civil rights activist. Hamer was a sharecropper who was beaten for
A looming statue of Fannie Lou Hamer is displayed prominently in the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, Miss., Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017, as a tribute honoring the civil rights activist. Hamer was a sharecropper who was beaten for registering other African-Americans to vote during the Jim Crow era, and gained international attention in 1964 when she testified before the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention, as she and others challenged the sitting of an all-white delegation from Mississippi. A centennial celebration marking her birth is planned for Friday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)