RULEVILLE — Despite cool outside temperatures Thursday, the atmosphere inside the Ruleville Community House was festive.
There the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation held its groundbreaking ceremony to commemorate Phase I of a multimillion-dollar structure that will serve 18 counties, primarily located in the Delta.
“This is a journey, y’all. We have made a difference,” said Freddie White-Johnson, director of the Mississippi Network for Cancer Control & Prevention of the University of Southern Mississippi. White-Johnson is the founder and director of the foundation.
Freddie White-Johnson, director of the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation speaks to the crowd at Thursday's groundbreaking in Ruleville. Behind White-Johnson are Jackie Hawkins, left, program manager; and Henry Sanders, a community health adviser with the foundation.
“We need your help. We’re saving lives, but we cannot do it without you,” she said to the crowd packing the Community House.
White-Johnson acknowledged that many of those in attendance at Thursday’s celebration had been there from the get-go.
She described the legendary civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, who fought against discrimination and died from undetected breast cancer in March 1977. White-Johnson said her father died of lung cancer the same year.
For White-Johnson, the fight against cancer — in all its forms — has been her life’s work for the past 15 years.
When White-Johnson was called to her father’s bedside, he had a simple mission for her. “He said, ‘Freddie, you’ve got to change the attitudes,’” she said.
“I made him a promise that day,” she said.
In 2004, White-Johnson, partnering with the University of Southern Mississippi, made the first tentative steps to bringing a message of hope through education and health screenings. Community pledges to help with the effort often came up empty.
“It is up to us — everyone in this room — to stand up and make a difference. It is up to us to get out there and change lives,” she said.
White-Johnson said that through the foundation:
• More than 1,000 community-based volunteers have been recruited.
• More than 5,000 women have received mammograms and pap tests.
• More than 400 men have received prostate cancer screenings.
Still, the battle against cancer is not over, she said. In 2018, the foundation lost three board members: Edgar N. Donahoe, president of the Sunflower County Board of Supervisors; Dr. Alfio Rausa, District III health officer; and attorney Carver Randle Sr. of Indianola.
“That was hard,” White-Johnson said, describing Rausa as being almost like a father to her.
Cancer struck White-Johnson’s family again with the loss of a younger sister and a brother this year.
Now with the center coming into focus, there is much to celebrate. Phase II will include construction of the building, and Phase III will include “finished side construction,” according to Tommy Avant, corporate vice president of IMS Engineering of Jackson, which is handling the project.
Thursday’s celebration was “truly a landmark and a dream that we’re fortunate to be a part of,” said Dr. Gordon Cannon, vice president of Research at USM and ex officio member of the foundation. “I’ve been a part of it for the past 10 years, and I can’t tell you how happy I am just to be here.
“This has been Freddie’s dream for as long as I’ve known her,” he said.
The state Legislature, including Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, assisted the foundation with a $300,000 donation in seed money, said state Sen. Willie Simmons.
White-Johnson has a way of making things happen, he said.
“Freddie is a person who is very conscious of harassment,” Simmons said to the crowd’s delight.
“I say harassment because everybody that comes along, she harasses. When you’ve just spent your last dollar, Freddie makes you give more,” he said.
Still, he said, it is for a good and noble cause, and “we appreciate Freddie and her work.”
Sammy Foster, a member of the foundation’s Men in Black and Blue Fighting Prostate Cancer, also serves as one of the foundation’s Community Health Advisers.
“Cancer is so widespread, especially in the Mississippi Delta. The Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation is actually a blessing in the Delta because of the disparity we have in Mississippi. The Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation is effective all over the state,” he said.
Jacqueline Hamer-Blake of Rulevillle, a great-niece of Hamer who calls Hamer “Mom” and is a breast cancer survivor herself, said the center will make a difference in people’s lives.
Jacqueline Hamer-Blake of Ruleville looks at a tribute to her great-aunt, civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, who died of undiagnosed breast cancer in 1977. Hamer-Blake said the planned cancer center, for which a groundbreaking was held Thursday, will serve the people of the Delta.
“By me being a survivor and my mom, Fannie Lou, dying from breast cancer, it will help especially the people of the Mississippi Delta to be more aware of the causes of cancer and the treatments that are out there . . . It’s a blessing to have this,” she said.
All donations to the foundation are tax-exempt.
The original version of this article incorrectly reported that Willie Simmons is a former state senator. He will be leaving the Senate at the end of this year.
