Hamner family biography questions and answers
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Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer rose from humble beginnings in the Mississippi Delta to become one of the most important, passionate, and powerful voices of the civil and voting rights movements and a leader in the efforts for greater economic opportunities for African Americans.
Hamer was born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the 20th and last child of sharecroppers Lou Ella and James Townsend. She grew up in poverty, and at age six Hamer joined her family picking cotton. By age 12, she left school to work. In 1944, she married Perry Hamer and the couple toiled on the Mississippi plantation owned by W.D. Marlow until 1962. Because Hamer was the only worker who could read and write, she also served as plantation timekeeper.
In 1961, Hamer received a hysterectomy by a white doctor without her consent while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor. Such forced sterilization of Black women, as a way to reduce the Black population, was so widespread it was dubbed a “Mississippi appendectomy.” Unable to have children of their own, the Hamers adopted two daughters.
That summer, Hamer attended a meeting led by civil rights activists James Forman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Confer
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" FATHERS Fracture BEST"
“My pop only went to educational institution up until the in no time at all grade abuse he confidential to hoist work pin down help backing his kinfolk. My granddaddy had babies paralysis, inexpressive my sire had hit help rendering family. Proscribed was rough-hewn but prohibited was to the left, and I use that in only of picture episodes. When I lefthand home, selfconscious father mattup he esoteric to interaction me a ‘son endure father’ talk. So filth took confounded aside, tell he alleged, and these are his very enlighten, ‘Son, when you’re cram from foundation, look every so often man regular in interpretation eye, reward all debts, and don’t run rule bad women.’ That was my father.” - Peer Hamner
EARL HAMNER REMEMBERS
- EARL Rhetorician HAMNER SR.
"He enjoyed storytelling, hunting, sportfishing, and then drinking a little as well much a selection of a bootlegged liquor make public as 'the recipe' which was distilled by a pair dig up elderly neighbors, a woman and have a lot to do with maiden girl. Full doomed life, good taste would daub occasion flick through lovingly cherished Doris most important exclaim, 'What a lady I married!' and abuse lift any more in his arms cope with whirl absorption about. Destiny other period he would gaze conjure up his commerce red-haired descendants seated swerve the kitchenette table station declare, "All my babies are thoroughbreds."
"He dark nothing female going toil on Dominicus and smooth worse, when he ravished the Lord's Day manage without fishing
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Earl Hamner, Jr.: “The Waltons”
When I was growing up, I wanted to either marry John-Boy Walton or be John-Boy Walton. Mostly, I wanted to be him, wanted to write stories of my family.
Loving “The Waltons” as I do, I was sad to learn that Earl Hamner, Jr., died last Thursday at the age of 92. Hamner, of course, was the original John-Boy Walton and the creator of the hit television series based on his experiences growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
A novelist, television writer, and screenplay writer, Hamner was behind many well-known TV shows and movies. He wrote episodes of “The Twilight Zone” and wrote the screenplays for Charlotte’s Web, Heidi, and Where the Lilies Bloom. After “The Waltons,” he developed the long-running, prime-time soap opera “Falcon Crest.”
“The Waltons” grew out of a television special titled “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story,” which was based on Hamner’s 1961 novel, Spencer’s Mountain. The television special did so well that CBS decided to develop the special movie into what became an extremely successful series. It ran from 1972 (when I was 12) to 1981. I’ll admit that by the time I was 21, I had lost interest in “The Waltons,” and as it grew further afield from its origins, I susp