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Fannie Lou Hamer
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“... I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
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“When they asked for those to raise their hands who'd go down to the courthouse the next day [to vote], I raised mine. Had it up as high as I could get it. I guess I'd had any sense I'd a-been a little scared, but what was the point of being scared. The only thing they could do to me was kill me and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember.”
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“... when I liberate myself, I'm liberating other people.”
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“... if this is a Great Society, I'd hate to see a bad one.”
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“[On the special requirements for blacks registering to vote:] That literacy test was rough. The registrar, Mr. Campbell, brought this big black book over there, and pointed out something for me to read. It was the 16th section of the Constitution of Mississippi ... dealing with de facto laws. I know as much about a de facto law as a horse knows about Christmas Day. And he told me to read it and copy. Then after I had copied it, give a reasonable interpretation. So you know about what happened to me. Well, I flunked the test, you know, 'cause I didn't know what in the world was a de facto law. Still don't really know what it is.”
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“[On those trying to obstruct her work for civil rights:] There was nothing they could do to me. They couldn't fire me, because I didn't have a job. They couldn't put me out of my house, because I didn't have one. They was nothing they could take from me any longer.”
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“[On a tour of black-governed African countries:] Being from the South, we never was taught much about our African heritage. The way everybody talked to us, everybody in Africa was savages and real stupid people. But I've seen more savage white folks here in America than I seen in Africa. I saw black men flying the airplanes, driving the buses, sitting behind the big desks in the bank, and just doing everything that I was used to seeing white people do.”
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“[On her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. [But] if you give him land, he will grow his own food.”
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“With the people, for the people, by the people, I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, 'cause that's really what happens ...”
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“... nobody's free until everybody's free.”
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“... if I fall, I will fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.”
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“... just because people are fat, it doesn't mean they are well fed. The cheapest foods are the fattening ones, not the most nourishing.”
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“Take a very close look at this American society. It's time to question these things ...”
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“[On including both blacks and whites in her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] Hunger has no color line.”
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“I'm not hung up on this thing about liberating myself from the black man. I'm not going to try that thing. I got a black husband, six feet three, two hundred and forty pounds, with a fourteen shoe, that I don't want to be liberated from.”
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“I know 'bout as much about communism as a horse knows about Christmas. ... If they ain't calling you a Communist, you ain't doing your job.”
Fannie Lou Hamer, U.S. civil rights leader
(1917 - 1977)
Full name: Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer.