On a rural street in the small western Mississippi city of Ruleville stands a tidy little park dedicated to the memory of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who grew up there.
There is a pavilion and monument to Hamer in the park, complete with a life-sized statue. The chair of the national committee that raised the funds necessary to commission and erect the statue in 2012 was Patricia Reid-Merritt, distinguished professor of Africana studies and social work at Stockton University, in Galloway Township.
In 2023, the Hamilton resident donated a replica of the statue to the City of Atlantic City, where Hamer made a famous speech at the National Democratic Convention in 1964.
For her efforts to uplift the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, as well as her decades of dedication to civil rights and social justice issues both on and off campus, Reid-Merritt received the first ever Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver Civil Rights and Social Justice Award from the Atlantic City Chapter of the NAACP on April 27. The occasion was the chapter’s 50th annual Freedom Fund Gala.
“I feel so honored to receive this award,” Reid-Merritt said. “The NAACP is to be congratulated on 50 years of service to the community, always a leader in the fight for civil rights and social justice. And what better way to honor the late lieutenant governor, who was also a fierce advocate in the ongoing fight for the protection of civil rights and the quest for a more socially just society.”
The award was created in honor of Oliver, who was twice elected lieutenant governor of New Jersey, serving from 2018 until her death in August 2023 at the age of 71.
Oliver served in the state Assembly from 2004-2018, becoming the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the Assembly in 2010. She was the first African-American woman to be elected lieutenant governor, and the first woman of color to be elected to statewide office in New Jersey.
“Sheila and I crossed paths many times,” she says. “Her passing was tragic, but her success was monumental.”
Stockton University has had a connection to Fannie Lou Hamer for more than 20 years. The university hosts the annual Fannie Lou Hamer Human and Civil Rights Symposium, and has also named its event room in its Atlantic City Academic Center after Hamer. Sheila Oliver gave the keynote speech at the Fannie Lou Hamer symposium in 2018.
Hamer, in turn, has had a connection to Atlantic City for 60 years.
“In 1964, she made a historic trip to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City to give testimony about the horrors of being in Mississippi and the efforts that were made to keep African Americans from voting,” Reid-Merritt says.
Appealing for her Freedom Democratic Party be seated as Mississippi’s delegation to the convention, instead of the institutional, White-led Democratic party, Hamer said: “I question America. Is this America? The land of the free and the home of the brave? Where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America.”
“She was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, but over time, people hadn’t paid as much attention to her,” Reid-Merritt says.
The Fannie Lou Hamer Statue Committee’s efforts to erect the monument, and Stockton University’s commitment to hosting the symposium in her honor each year, have been important steps in bringing Hamer’s legacy to future generations of Americans.
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Stockton University was founded as Stockton State College in 1969. It held its first classes in 1971, 53 years ago.
Patricia Reid-Merritt has been teaching at the school for 48 of those years. Reid-Merritt was part of the faculty when the university created its social work program.
Through the years, she has taught classes on social work and social welfare, but also classes on African-American dance as well as Africana studies, which Reid-Barrett describes as the study of African-descended people throughout the diaspora. Reid-Merritt was instrumental in developing Stockton’s Africana Studies minor program.
When in 2020 the university decided to institute an Africana Studies major program, Reid-Merritt had a similar opportunity to the one she had 44 years earlier with the social work program: to shape it using her experience and expertise as a lifelong instructor in the field.
The major program encompasses issues including race, race history, institutional racism, African-American arts and culture, social injustice and poverty. Also African history, African religions and philosophy and the history of Africa-descended people.
“We had a minor for 40 years, it was a very active minor. There has always been very strong enrollment,” Reid-Merritt says. We offer all kinds of courses: African-American and African history, contemporary issues, Black theater, Black music. I just finished teaching a course on anti-Black racism, and there is another course I’ve been teaching for nearly 40 years on the Civil Rights Movement. We have courses that really do cover the experience of African-American and Africa-descended people.”
Reid-Merritt brought the first Kwanzaa program to Stockton, and was a part of the development of the university’s Council of Black Faculty and Staff. She has been involved for many years with the New Jersey Association of Black Social Workers and the New Jersey Black Issues Convention. She has also written a number of books, including Righteous Self Determination: The Black Social Work Movement in America and Race in America: How a Pseudoscientific Concept Shaped Human Interaction.
Originally from Philadelphia, Reid-Merritt has lived in Hamilton for 30 years. She founded Afro-One Dance, Drama and Drum Theatre in Willingboro in 1974, a program designed to celebrate the community’s African and spiritual heritage.
Afro-One programs were severely curtailed by the pandemic, necessitating closure of its school in Mount Laurel. She says she has considered whether to return to that realm, but now that she is in her 70s, is not sure she could maintain that kind of schedule.
“The last four, five years, my full attention has been focused on Africana Studies,” she says. “I probably will remain that intensely focused for another couple years, but at some point I’ve got to think, ‘Are you going to retire or what?’ It’s a rare phenomenon for a person to be on the same job for 50 years.”
Patricia Reid-Merritt holds the Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver Civil Rights and Social Justice Award, presented to her by the Atlantic City NAACP Chapter on April 27, 2024.,
