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… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa. We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bo ught them; white people changed their names my maiden name is supposed to be Townsend, but really, what is… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
We have to build our own power. We have to win every single political office we can, where we have a majority of black… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
You know what really made me sick? I was in Washington, D.C. at another time reading in a paper where the U.S. gives Byron… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
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… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
I met one child there eleven years old, speaking three languages [in Guinea]. He could speak English, French and Malinke. Speaking my language actually… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
... some of my people could have been left [in Africa] and are living there. And I can't understand them and they don't know… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
I saw in Chicago, on the street where I was visiting my sister-in-law, this "Urban Renewal" and it means one thing: "Negro removal." But… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
We didnt come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired, — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
The Mississippi is not the only river. There's the Tallahatchie and the Big Black. People have been put in the river year after year,… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered and nothing, I mean nothing has been done about that. — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
What I really feel is necessary is that the black people in this country wil have to upset this apple cart. We can no… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image