Awake Quote by Leah D. Daughtry

“When a congressional committee reported in February on the Mississippi bloodshed, it concluded that the nation had arrived at a crossroads and “must either…

— Ron Chernow

When I saw Fannie Lou Hamer speech I said, "Well, how did this Democratic Party that Miss Hamer is talking about, become the Democratic…

— Leah D. Daughtry

“They all followed Mississippi’s example, instituting race-veiled voting restrictions, from literacy tests to poll taxes, that would purge their voting rolls of the remaining…

— Ibram X. Kendi

You can tell this by the program the federal government had to train 2,400 tractor drivers. They would have trained Negro and white together,…

— Fannie Lou Hamer

I am a lifelong Mississippian. I remember Jim Crow, 'colored' and 'white' water fountains, and my mother's inability to try on a dress in…

— Mike Espy

The only thing we took out was the Constitution of the State of Mississippi and the interpretation of the Constitution. We had 63,000 people…

— Fannie Lou Hamer

If you're going to get elected to anything in Mississippi, you have to pay attention to and court the black vote.

— Mike Espy

“King had marched six weeks earlier through the Mississippi town where the civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered. He had called…

— Rick Perlstein

I did not believe what I was told about being poor and black and female in Mississippi in 1954.

— Oprah Winfrey

“The volunteers merely dropped in for a summer, then went home to question America. Some would spearhead the events that defined the 1960s—the Berkeley…

— Bruce Watson

In talking about the [Emmett Till murder trial], you have to repeat the atmosphere. This is Mississippi in 1955, with a long history of…

— Charles Diggs

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents,…

— Alice Walker