Sunflower County holds a unique place in the history of the civil rights movement because it was the home of both Fannie Lou Hamer, the legendary civil rights leader, and Senator James Eastland, the spiritual leader of the segregationists.  For many people across the country, these two Sunflower County residents represented the moral choices of the movement; for some people, the two symbolized the forces of good and evil in the struggle.

    After World War II, black Mississippians became more aggressive about civil rights.  Following local leaders such as Amzie Moore in Cleveland, Aaron Henry in Clarksdale, and Medgar Evers in Jackson, blacks began to press for voting rights, equal education, and an end to segregation.  But Sunflower County was a "tough" county ruled by powerful planters such as Senator Eastland, and change came slowly.  Not until the early 1960s were civil rights workers able to make progress.

    In 1962, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began to organize in Sunflower County.  SNCC worker Charles McLaurin, a native Mississippian, traveled the rural backroads to get people to register to vote.  One such person was a Ruleville sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer.  In August 1962, she and more than a dozen other blacks went to the courthouse in Indianola to register, but they were denied.  That night, Hamer's boss confronted her and told her to forget about voting, but Hamer defended her actions.  She was evicted the next day and began working full-time for civil rights.

    Hamer became a leading figure in the civil rights movement.  She encouraged SNCC to pursue Freedom Summer in 1964, when college students from across the country came to Mississippi to help blacks register to vote.  In Sunflower County, workers established Freedom Schools in Indianola and Ruleville.  At Freedom Schools, civil rights workers held summer school for children during the day and offered citizenship classes for adults at night.  Though the schools were temporary, they helped inspire people to work for change in their communities.  They have inspired the Sunflower County Freedom Project as well.