text: Hamer became interested in the civil rights movement in the 1950s. She heard leaders of the local movement speak at annual Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) conferences, held in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. The attendees of the yearly conferences discussed black voting rights and other civil rights issues black communities in the area faced.  She became a good friend of RCNL founder and head T. R. M. Howard.
  Civil rights activism
  Registering to vote
  On August 31, 1962, Hamer and 17 others attempted to vote but failed a literacy test, which meant they were denied this right. On December 4, just after returning to her hometown, she went to the courthouse in Indianola to take the test again, but failed and was turned away. Hamer told the registrar, "You'll see me every 30 days till I pass". On January 10, 1963, she took the test a third time. She was successful and was informed that she was now a registered voter in Mississippi. But when she attempted to vote that fall, she discovered her registration gave her no actual power to vote as her county also required voters to have two poll tax receipts. This requirement had emerged in some (mostly former Confederate) states after the right to vote was first given to all races by the 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. These laws, along with the literacy tests and local government acts of coercion, were used against black people and Native Americans. Hamer later paid for and acquired the requisite poll tax receipts.