In June 1963, Hamer was brutally beaten by police officers in prison in Winona, Mississippi. Police officers forced black inmates at the prison to take part in Hamer’s attack. She almost died.

The violence was grotesquely harsh even by Jim Crow standards. Hamer was beaten in turn by two black prisoners, Roosevelt Knox and Sol Poe, who were reportedly ordered to beat Hamer or else they would be beaten themselves. She was forced to lie face down while the two prisoners beat her with loaded batons – police batons filled with sand or metal balls at the ends.

When Hamer regained consciousness, she heard officers discussing the possibility of throwing her into the river.

Hamer never fully recovered. She lost partial sight in one eye, walked with a limp, and suffered permanent and debilitating kidney damage, which may have contributed to her death at age 59 in 1977.

Both of these things—a black woman leading the peaceful transfer of power and a black woman being beaten to death for trying to register black voters—happened in my lifetime. And despite being more than half a century apart, these historic landmarks are directly connected. Together, they send a powerful message, particularly to Democrats trying to find a way forward after a bitter defeat.

Part of the message is simple. Carry on. Fight to keep America true to its stated values. Hamer did not expect to see the change in her life that she fought for. But she was stubborn enough to believe in the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Stubborn enough to persevere even after losing almost everything, including her life

If you look closely at the recordings of Hamer’s speech at the 1964 convention, you can hear the strength in her voice, but you can also see the physical scars left by that prison beating.

Hamer’s strength, courage and perseverance are remarkable in a country where the right to vote is still being questioned and overall voter turnout remains depressingly low. And they are worth mentioning because they are not ancient history.

Hamer pushed for suffrage in the early 1960s, at a time when only a small number of black citizens in Mississippi were allowed to vote and the names of people who wanted to register were required to be published in Mississippi newspapers for two weeks. This public statement meant that attempting to exercise your constitutional right could result in all sorts of retaliation. Threats. Harassment. Job loss. Death.

Hamer faced many of these consequences. She lost her job. This also applied to her adopted daughter and her husband. The family had to live with friends whose homes were sometimes shot and destroyed.

Although Hamer famously said she was “tired of being sick and tired,” it is easy to see how she could have stepped away from her crusade to tend to her wounds, her marriage, or her family. But she continued. And she has helped move this country forward.

This weekend, her niece Doris Hamer Richardson accepted the Medal of Freedom on her behalf at the White House. The ceremony noted that Hamer reminded America that “no one is free until everyone is free.”

Two days later, Kamala Harris declared, “America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”

The messages then and now are similar. Carry on. Keep fighting. We have learned that democracy is fragile. It’s not guaranteed. And we also know: Democracy at its best is a verb.