Fannie Lou Hamer was a tireless and fearless civil rights leader. She was brutally beaten while imprisoned at a county jail in Winona, Mississippi. Still, she persisted in speaking truth to power.

Locked out of the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party, Mrs. Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In August 1964, MFDP delegates traveled to Atlantic City, site of the Democratic National Convention. She testified before the DNC Credentials Committee.

Mrs. Hamer asked: “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Sixty years later, Black women did their part to save the country from the chaos and trampling of democratic norms that they know are the hallmark of Donald Trump’s America.

Mrs. Hamer famously said, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Black women are sick and tired of showing up for others. So on Harriet Tubman Day, they are reclaiming self-care.

General Tubman knew the importance of self-care. As a child, she was viciously struck with a heavy weight which caused a traumatic head injury. While leading her people to freedom, she would sometimes stop and sleep. Though plagued by “sleeping spells,” General Tubman persisted:

I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

With the Trump Administration off the rails, Black women are “sleeping in” on March 10, 2025, the National Day of Rest for Black Women.