This Little Light of Mine

This Little Light of Mine, with music by Chandler Carter and words by Diana Solomon-Glover, illuminates the efforts of Civil Rights hero, Fannie Lou Hamer, to secure voting rights for Black Mississippians. Centered around Hamer’s appeal to the 1964 Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee to replace Mississippi’s all-white delegation of “Dixiecrats” with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, an interracial delegation she helped found, Hamer, daughter Dorothy Jean, and fellow freedom fighter, June Johnson, tell the story of Hamer’s courageous battle to raise the status of Mississippi’s Black inhabitants to “first-class citizens”. Hamer’s personal sacrifices leading up to that moment—the violent harassment she and her family face, starvation, medical terrorism, loss of livelihood, and the horrific beating she suffers at the hands of local police— imbue her with an unassailable moral authority and provide an explosive testimony that sends shockwaves throughout the nation and alters the course of American history.

Please be advised: this production uses strong language, racial slurs, and symbols of violence to accurately depict the life of Fannie Lou Hamer.