Fannie Lou Hamer Garden

​

Fannie Lou Hamer was an American civil rights activists who was passionate about Black liberation through farming and tending to the land. Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farm Cooperative as a way to empower Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers.

This led to the creation of farms in cities like Detroit to help solve food insecurity.

​

The Fannie Lou Hamer Garden was created by Black students in the Spring of 2018 to address how these issues are existing on campus and ways that students can make a difference. The Project Lead—William Smith—was granted funds from The Green Initiative Fund in 2018 under the Environmental Justice theme. The garden is used to grow culturally relevant foods by using agro-ecological methods that “sustain the earth while providing a context for black students to learn about the importance of reclaiming land and farming practices” (TGIF Grant). The garden also plans to serve the larger Black community outside of UC Berkeley to share resources, host workdays/workshops, and guest speakers.