1 woman show in Gainesville honors Fannie Lou Hamer

The late civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer will be portrayed in a one-woman-show every weekend of the month to showcase her activism, resilience and unwavering courage as part of a Women's History Month show performed by Pamela Marshall-Koons.

Written by Marshall-Koons, the show is part of the “Voices of Courage Series” presented by the University of Florida  Driveway Theatre Project and At The WELLness Network.

“I decided to do this to celebrate Women’s History Month in east Gainesville," Marshall Koons said. "She (Hamer) had the heart and the passion for what she was doing. She gave voice to a lot of people’s thoughts who were not brave enough to say it.”

The play will be performed by Marshall-Koons every weekend throughout the month of March at the Santa Fe College Gainesville Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at 2153 SE Hawthorne Road.

Performances will begin at 6 p.m. on Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays.

Admission is $10 and all proceeds go towards Alachua County charities.

Hamer was born on Oct. 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, and died on March 14, 1977, in the Taborian Hospital in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

She was a voting and women’s rights activist, community organizer and a leader in the civil rights movement.

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There is a memorial statue of her in Ruleville, Mississippi.

The play was created after Marshall-Koons was inspired to do so by Carol Richardson, the city of Gainesville’s Cultural Affairs manager, who asked Marshall-Koons to act as Hamer a few years ago at the A. Quinn Jones Museum and Cultural Center. Marshall-Koons did her research and asked her niece to teach her how to sing to bring Hamer to life.

“Fannie Lou Hamer exemplifies negro spirituality,” Marshall-Koons said.

Throughout the hour-long monologue, Marshall-Koons talks about Hamer’s life in Mississippi when her family was sharecropping, the lack of education in the state, the creation of the Freedom Farm Cooperative, her beating in a county jail that left her kidneys damaged, facing racism in healthcare, and there are snippets from Hamer’s speeches alongside gospel hymns that are sung with a tambourine.

“You can pray until you faint but if you don’t get up and do something, it’s not going to fall in your lap,” says Marshall-Koons during the monologue. “As long as we keep sitting down, they will keep their feet on our necks. It’s time for us to stand up.”

After the show, Marshall-Koons led a Q&A discussion.

“Thank you for spending time with me to listen to her story that’s not told often,” Marshall-Koons said.

Wanda Burnette-Walker said Seeing the play brought back memories of when she acted as Fannie Lou Hamer decades ago during a monologue as Hamer being in jail, said Wanda Burnette-Walker.

Marshall-Koons did a phenomenal job capturing the essence of the late civil rights activist, Burnette-Walker said.

“To learn more about her through Pamela’s performance was amazing,” Burnette-Walker said. “There were things I didn’t know about her.”

Jacquelyn Collins who attended the event and said Black history is American history and the one-woman-play is a great depiction of that, said Jacquelyn Collins, who attended the show over the weekend.

“We’ve had many who fought for injustice, and it goes unheard,” Collins said.

She commends Marshall-Koons for doing the play in east Gainesville to encourage people to learn more about Black history and to see talent in east Gainesville.

“We can never know enough about our history,” Collins said. “It’s been hidden from us for so long. I was so moved by Fannie Lou Hamer’s story because she said we just need to tell the truth, especially since we’ve been told wrong for so long.”

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Gainesville woman honors Fannie Lou Hamer with 1 woman show