[My mother] tried so hard to make life easy for us. Those are the things that forced me to try to do something different and when this Movement came to Mississippi I still feel it is one of the greatest… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share Image
Christianity is being concerned about [others], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I… — 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 people... The question for black people is not, when is the white man going to give us our rights, or when is he going to give us good education for our children, or when is he… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share
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 de la Beckwith - the man who is charged with murdering Medgar Evers - they were giving him so much money for some land and I ask "Is this America?" We can no longer ignore the… — Fannie Lou Hamer Copy Share
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