Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer at Copaken Stage At Kansas City Repertory Theatre

A woman who picked cotton in Mississippi stands before the 1964 Democratic National Convention, demanding that her voice count as much as anyone else's. Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer brings that confrontation to the Copaken Stage at Kansas City Repertory Theatre, where Cheryl L. West's play with gospel music charts Fannie Lou Hamer's fight to dismantle the barriers keeping Black Americans from the ballot box.

Hamer grew up in a sharecropping family and became a civil-rights activist who co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Her challenge to entrenched power at the convention exposed a party that preached equality but practiced exclusion, and West's script follows the determination it took to keep speaking when every institution told her to stay silent.

Gospel music runs through the production, carrying the conviction and faith that sustained Hamer through violence, intimidation and indifference. Morgana Wilborn directs this KCRep staging, letting the songs amplify the resilience of a sharecropper's daughter who refused to accept that voting was a privilege reserved for others. The music doesn't summarize history—it reveals the spirit behind the organizing, the meetings and the confrontations that changed American democracy.

Secure your seat in Kansas City for a story about what it costs to demand a seat at the table.