Fannie Lou Hamer, called the “spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” led the way with organizing ability, music, and stories, helping to win the right to vote for black Americans in the South.
Selected Fannie Lou Hamer Quotations
- It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country, when I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi?… I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of setting the Negro free in Mississippi.
- As quoted in This Little Light of Mine, ch. 8, by Hay Mills (1993). Said on September 13, 1965, in a hearing before the United States House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Elections.
- 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 what really happens.
- As quoted in This Little Light of Mine, ch. 8, by Hay Mills (1993).
- I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
- Widely quoted, including Freedomways, p. 240 (Second quarter, 1965). This quote was later employed as her epitaph, and used by American singer and songwriter Anastacia at her song Sick and Tired.
- It’s time for America to get right.
- As quoted in This Little Light of Mine, ch. 8, by Hay Mills (1993).
- I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.
- As quoted in Freedomways, p. 232 (Second quarter, 1965).
• I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.
• To support whatever is right, and to bring in justice where we’ve had so much injustice.
• Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.
• We serve God by serving our fellow man; kids are suffering from malnutrition. People are going to the fields hungry. If you are a Christian, we are tired of being mistreated.
• Whether you have a Ph.D., or no D, we’re in this bag together.
And whether you’re from Morehouse or Nohouse, we’re still in this bag together. Not to fight to try to liberate ourselves from the men — this is another trick to get us fighting among ourselves — but to work together with the black man, then we will have a better chance to just act as human beings, and to be treated as human beings in our sick society.• There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.
• One night I went to the church. They had a mass meeting. And I went to the church, and they talked about how it was our right, that we could register and vote. They were talking about we could vote out people that we didn’t want in office, we thought that wasn’t right, that we could vote them out. That sounded interesting enough to me that I wanted to try it. I had never heard, until 1962, that black people could register and vote.
• When they asked for those to raise their hands who’d go down to the courthouse the next day, I raised mine. Had it high up as I could get it. I guess if I’d had any sense I’d’ve 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.
• The landowner said I would have to go back to withdraw or I would have to leave and so I told him I didn’t go down there to register for him, I was down there to register for myself.
• I am determined to get every Negro in the state of Mississippi registered.
• They just kept beating me and telling me, “You nigger bitch, we’re gonna make you wish you were dead.” … Every day of my life I pay with the misery of that beating.
• on northern racism, speaking in New York: The man’ll shoot you in the face in Mississippi, and you turn around he’ll shoot you in the back here.
• in nationally-televised testimony to the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention, 1964: If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, 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.
• When the Democratic National Committee offered a compromise in 1964 to seat 2 delegates of the 60+ sent by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party: We didn’t come for no two seats when all of us is tired.
• to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, who brought a compromise offer to the MFDP delegates: Do you mean to tell me that your position is more important than four hundred thousand black people’s lives? … Now if you lose this job of Vice-President because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take it this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I’m going to pray to Jesus for you.
• Question to her mother when she was a child: Why weren’t we white?
• We are sick and tired of our people having to go to Vietnam and other places to fight for something we don’t have here.
Quotes About Fannie Lou Hamer:
• Hamer biographer Kay Mills: If Fannie Lou Hamer had had the same opportunities that Martin Luther King had, then we would have had a female Martin Luther King.
• June Johnson: I’m amazed at how she put fear in the hearts of powerful people like Lyndon B. Johnson.
• Constance Slaughter-Harvey: Fannie Lou Hamer made me realize that we’re nothing unless we can hold this system accountable and the way we hold this system accountable is to vote and to take an active note to determine who our leaders are.
More About Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer, To Praise Our Bridges (1967)
My life has been almost like my mother’s was, because I married a man who sharecropped. We didn’t have it easy and the only way we could ever make it through the winter was because Pap had a little juke joint and we made liquor. That was the only way we made it. I married in 1944 and stayed on the plantation until 1962 when I went down to the courthouse in Indianola to register to vote. That happened because I went to a mass meeting one night.
Until then I’d never heard of no mass meeting and I didn’t know that a Negro could register and vote. Bob Moses, Reggie Robinson, Jim Bevel and James Forman were some of the SNCC workers who ran that meeting. When they asked for those to raise their hands who’d go down to the courthouse the next day, I raised mine. Had it up as high as I could get it. I guess if 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.
Well, there was eighteen of us who went down to the courthouse that day and all of us were arrested. Police said the bus was painted the wrong color – said it was too yellow. After I got bailed out I went back to the plantation where Pap and I had lived for eighteen years. My oldest girl met me and told me that Mr. Marlow, the plantation owner, was mad and raising sand. He had heard that I had tried to register. That night he called on us and said, “We’re not going to have this in Mississippi and you will have to withdraw. I am looking for your answer, yea or nay?” I just looked. He said, “I will give you until tomorrow morning. And if you don’t withdraw you will have to leave. If you do go withdraw, it’s only how I feel, you might still have to leave.” So I left that same night. Pap had to stay on till work on the plantation was through. Ten days later they fired into Mrs. Tucker’s house where I was staying. They also shot two girls at Mr. Sissel’s.
I’ve worked on voter registration here ever since I went to that first mass meeting. In 1964 we registered 63,000 black people from Mississippi into the Freedom Democratic Party. We formed our own party because the whites wouldn’t even let us register. We decided to challenge the white Mississippi Democratic Party at the National Convention. We followed all the laws that the white people themselves made. We tried to attend the precinct meetings and they locked the doors on us or moved the meetings and that’s against the laws they made for their ownselves. So we were the ones that held the real precinct meetings. At all these meetings across the state we elected our representatives to go to the National Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. But we learned the hard way that even though we had all the law and all the righteousness on our side – that white man is not going to give up his power to us.
LINK:
http://home.earthlink.net/~hamer.institute/resources/links.html
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/38.4/pdf/deardorff_tht38.4.pdf
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/fannielou_hamer.htm
VIDEO LINKS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKXoXwYpzmU
REFERENCES:
(Courtesy of Amazon.com)
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Fannie Lou Hamer
Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, DNConvention
delivered 22 August 1964
Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.
It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.
After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down — tried to register.
After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. And before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, “Fannie Lou, do you know — did Pap tell you what I said?”
And I said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “Well I mean that.”
Said, “If you don’t go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave.” Said, “Then if you go down and withdraw,” said, “you still might have to go because we’re not ready for that in Mississippi.”
And I addressed him and told him and said, “I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.”
I had to leave that same night.
On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also, Mr. Joe McDonald’s house was shot in.
And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people — to use the restaurant — two of the people wanted to use the washroom.
The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, “It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out.”
I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too.
As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the five people in a highway patrolman’s car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the five workers was in and said, “Get that one there.” And when I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.
I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams. I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, “Can you say, ‘yes, sir,’ nigger? Can you say ‘yes, sir’?”
And they would say other horrible names.
She would say, “Yes, I can say ‘yes, sir.'”
“So, well, say it.”
She said, “I don’t know you well enough.”
They beat her, I don’t know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.
And it wasn’t too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. And I told him Ruleville. He said, “We are going to check this.” And they left my cell and it wasn’t too long before they came back. He said, “You are from Ruleville all right,” and he used a curse word. And he said, “We’re going to make you wish you was dead.”
I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack. The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face. And I laid on my face, the first Negro began to beat me.
And I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.
After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat to sit on my feet — to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.
One white man — my dress had worked up high — he walked over and pulled my dress — I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, 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 of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
Thank you.
AUDIO CLIPS:
http://audio.pacificaradioarchives.org/
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 
So happy to see this. Thanks for posting. I’ve posted a link on my blog http://www.rebeccawalker.com with the message below. Keep on doing what you are doing. We need you. –Rebecca
When I was growing up, my mother talked about Fannie Lou Hamer as one of the most important figures of the civil rights movement. We had a photograph of her in our home, and every time I sang the spiritual “This Little Light of Mine” I imagined myself singing alongside Fanny Lou Hamer at the Democratic National Convention of 1964.
I was happy to come across this entry on her life and work, and wanted to share it with you.
Long live the Fannie Lou Hamer in us all.
Ms. Walker, welcome.
It is an honor to have you grace my humble site with your presence.
Thank you for your comments.
Please come by as often as you wish.
Peace.
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