In this portrait of civil rights and voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, Sherman Beck memorializes Hamer’s warrior spirit with a look of calm but profound resolve. She appears to be aglow, and the many colors present in her face, hair, and eyes radiate outward into the abstract geometric field that surrounds her. Born into poverty in 1917 Mississippi, and raised picking cotton, Hamer worked as a sharecropper until she was in her 40s. In 1961, while undergoing a procedure to remove a tumor, Hamer was given a forced hysterectomy without consent by a white doctor. That same year, she attended a meeting of civil rights activists, thus beginning her career as an influential activist, political lobbyist, and economic justice reformer. Hamer died in 1977, but in the short 15 years during which she worked to improve the lives and futures of Black Americans, she forever changed the political and social landscape of the American South. She is known for many powerful and witty statements, including, "Righteousness exalts a nation. Hate just makes people miserable,” “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” and “Sometimes it seems like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off.”