Fannie Lou Hamer Quotes (1917-1977)

“In 1961, civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, a disabled Black woman, was forcibly sterilized without her knowledge; the procedure was so common at the time that it had its own nickname, the "Mississippi appendectomy." Buck v. Bell has never been overturned.”

“We will never forget Aaron Henry and Fannie Lou Hamer. Their testimony educated a nation and brought the political powers to their knees in repentance, for the convention voted never again to seat a delegation that was racially segregated. But the true test of their message would be whether or not Negroes in Northern cities heard them and would register and vote.”

“Over and over again the defense of the family is seen as the primary concern of black women; their understanding of the defense of the family always includes the elevation of the black man. "We are here to work side by side with the black man in trying to bring liberation to all people," is the way Fannie Lou Hamer, the 20th-century Mississippi grassroots leader, summarized a long tradition.”

“The voices of the grassroots, of people like Fannie Lou Hamer, must always be heard if we are to understand the past and move effectively toward the future.”

“a lot of the women in northern New Mexico were like the women I had met in rural Mississippi. They were Fanny Lou Hamers — only they spoke Spanish — in northern New Mexico. Same kind of older, tough ladies who had seen it all, and the same kind of strength, you know? So there was just nothing you could do except respect — a whole lot — those women.”

“if you think about the civil rights movement, what we were able to do was get Jim Crow out of three very distinct arenas in the country: First, there was public accommodations; second, there was voting rights and access to the political structures of the country; and third, and not well known, access to the national party structure itself — that is, to the Democratic Party. And that was Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 convention of the Democratic Party. And remember, Kennedy had been assassinated. Johnson had been moved into the presidency, but he hadn’t been nominated yet, right? And so, we won those struggles, but what we didn’t win was getting Jim Crow out of education, right? And that was actually the subtext of the right to vote...And Fannie Lou Hamer, when she testified — and, you know, Martin Luther King testified, but President Johnson wasn’t afraid of him. He was afraid of this sharecropper from Louisville, Mississippi. And when she went on to testify, the president said, “We have an announcement to make.” And he took over the TV, right?”

“I idolize Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker. And they are supreme examples of what being freedom fighters, principled, fearless — or at least courageous. There’s a difference between being fearless and being courageous. Courageous is actually better, because everyone should have some fear about what might actually harm them. And, of course, Fannie Lou Hamer paid a huge price for wanting to do something as seemingly ordinary as vote. But in the Jim Crow South of that era, Black people, virtually none of them were allowed to vote. She paid a permanent price because of the beating that she received. And I just found out yesterday, if you can believe it, after all these years, that she actually was blinded in one eye. She is known for having worked with SNCC, doing voter organizing and other kinds of antiracist organizing during that Jim Crow era, and then, of course, speaking out so powerfully at the 1964 Democratic convention about what went on in Mississippi, and asking the very, very, very relevant question: “Is this America?”...I actually had the great, great pleasure and honor of meeting Fannie Lou Hamer when I was a teenager in Cleveland in 1965 and was very involved in the civil rights movement as a young person.”

“women played a crucial role in those early dangerous years of organizing in the South, and were looked on with admiration...Women of all ages demonstrated, went to jail. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper in Ruleville, Mississippi, became legendary as organizer and speaker. She sang hymns; she walked picket lines with her familiar limp (as a child she contracted polio). She roused people to excitement at mass meetings: "I'm sick an' tired o' bein' sick an' tired!"”