In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer was scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention, testifying before the convention’s Credentials Committee about voter suppression and brutality. It was during this speech that Hamer declared “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired!”
Hamer was warning America about systemic failures that kept Black Mississippians from voting. But America chose to look away: President Lyndon B. Johnson instead held a televised press conference during her speech, delaying the broadcast of her now-famous testimony.
It’s been that way for women since the country’s founding. Until relatively recently, women have been relegated to second-class citizenship, barred from holding power. Women did not win the right to vote until 1920. Of the 64 women who have served in the U.S. Senate, 54 were elected after the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act. (A reminder that 1964 was just 62 years ago.) Although the U.S. Constitution starts with “We the People …” our warnings have been easy to ignore.
But women keep trying.
Even if the rest of America is not listening.
Women warned us about the Supreme Court again and again
What does it look like when America ignores women’s warnings? Look no further than the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1991, Anita Hill warned us about then-nominee Clarence Thomas. She testified before the all-white, all-male members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing Thomas, nominated by George H.W. Bush, of workplace harassment and sexual assault. The senators didn’t listen, and Thomas was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to sit on the court by the slimmest margin in decades.
In 2016, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned us about Trump and the danger of his being able to nominate U.S. Supreme Court justices. We didn’t listen.
In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris warned us about Trump and the danger that he will nominate yet more justices. We didn’t listen.
The Supreme Court that Clinton warned us about overturned Roe v. Wade, and women’s bodily autonomy has been under attack ever since.
Last week, we watched in horror as the conservative majority of the Supreme Court gutted what was remaining of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. For about 50 years, the Voting Rights Act was supported by and reauthorized by both parties, but starting in the early 2000s, the Republicans have worked hard to eliminate it.
The same court is currently deliberating on whether to uphold birthright citizenship, and how to define the limits of executive authority.
The three liberal SCOTUS associate justices now serving are all women: Elena Kagan, nominated by President Barack Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by President Barack Obama and Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated by President Joe Biden. Is that just a coincidence?
In Michigan, women lead anyway
In Michigan, we have had a trifecta of liberal and progressive female leaders (and one very tall liberal and progressive man) in charge of our state for the past eight years. Women here are not just warning us about threats to democracy, they are protecting it, sometimes at great personal risk.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won both of her gubernatorial elections with wide margins and is now term-limited. She has protected women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. A few years ago, a right-wing extremist group plotted to kidnap her, take her to Wisconsin and kill her.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is fighting to protect voting rights, upholding the integrity of our election system and rebuffing Trump’s threats to federalize our elections. She is currently running for governor.
Attorney General Dana Nessel has worked hard to guard against any damaging Republican or MAGA policies taking hold in Michigan. She has worked with attorneys general around the country to fight Trump policies like the end of birthright citizenship, cuts to federal health care funding, threats to our voting rights and most recently, an attempt to limit reproductive health care.
Nationwide, scores of women are in leadership positions on the local, state and national levels, working to protect and expand our rights. That’s what happens when we listen.
Fannie Lou Hamer was never silenced
It took many years for the Democratic Party to listen to Fannie Lou Hamer, and integrate her policies and programs.
In 1964, the same year Hamer testified at the convention, she helped organize Freedom Summer, bringing hundreds of Black and white college students to help with African American voter registration. She also announced her candidacy for the Mississippi House of Representatives, but was barred from the ballot.
Hamer’s activism came at great cost. She was subjected to a hysterectomy performed without her consent. She and her husband were fired from the cotton plantation where they worked, and their home and most of their possessions were stolen. When she led efforts to register Black people to vote, she was jailed and beaten so badly that the injuries, including to her eye, plagued her for the rest of her life. Still, she could not be silenced.
She died in 1977 at the age of 57. In 2025, 48 years after her death, President Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
If you are watching what Trump, MAGA, and the Republicans are doing to destroy our democracy and re-mold the United States into a perversion of democratic ideals ― anti-everything except a white, straight, alpha male, Christian nationalist version of this country ― it’s time to invoke our inner Fannie Lou Hamers and declare, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired!”
And maybe, finally, America will listen to women.
Free Press contributing columnist Pamela Hilliard Owens is a local writer, CEO of Pam Speaks 2 You Branding and Marketing Academy and podcast, and co-founder of the We Are Speaking Substack newsletter and podcast. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Women warned us about Trump Supreme Court and the Voting Rights Act | Opinion
Reporting by Pamela Hilliard Owens, Contributing columnist / Detroit Free Press
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