The Southern Interscholastic Press Association is pleased to announce the recipient of its 2026 Leslie Dennis Heart for Diversity Award, the Fannie Lou Hamer Educational Resource Center.
The digital educational resource and the film, “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America” tell the story of Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper turned human rights activist. Hamer led grassroots voting rights efforts in Mississippi, among other initiatives, and testified about the racism that had defined hers and many other lives of her time.
The Leslie Dennis Heart for Diversity Award, named for a previous SIPA director, is presented to an individual or organization that has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to promoting diversity, inclusivity and multicultural awareness through scholastic media.
The scholars associated with the film, Dr. Maegan Parker Brooks and Dr. Davis W. Houck created a comprehensive national “Find Your Voice” K-12 curriculum based on Hamer’s life and work. They were also consultants on the film. The curriculum includes lesson plans, a children’s book, an animated movie, a driving tour and a summer STEM camp for high school students – the Sunflower County Film Academy held in Hamer’s native Mississippi Delta. Mississippi Scholastic Press Association director Dr. R.J. Morgan, MJE, an instructional associate professor at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media, contributed to the curriculum and nominated the project for the Dennis award.
Morgan noted that the film camp educates young people about their rights and trains teenagers to write, produce and direct short videos, offering this training to students in areas where their local school may not have the resources to do so.
“Fannie Lou Hamer was the living embodiment of the First Amendment,” Morgan said, noting that Find Your Voice continues that work. “This is what investing in the next generation of Southern Storytelling looks like.”
SIPA is a more than 100-year-old regional scholastic journalism association serving middle and high schools in the Southeast. SIPA is housed at the University of South Carolina’s College of Information and Communications. The Dennis Award will be presented March 7 at the organization’s annual convention in Columbia, South Carolina.
