Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was a pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, known for her tireless advocacy for voting rights and women’s rights after enduring brutality at the hands of police and white supremacists.
Born into a sharecropping family in Montgomery County, Mississippi, Hamer was the youngest of 20 children. Her life was marked by both hardships and a profound commitment to social justice.
In 1968, Hamer was interviewed for a documentary by Lerone Bennett, Jr., Hamer talks about the conditions of life in Mississippi for Black people and why young people at the time were demanding change.
“Mississippi is still a very rough place. People is not just walking up like they used to do walking out, shooting a man down, getting maybe 2-300 people carrying out a lynching. It’s a more subtle way. They let you starve to death like with jobs, like some of the things that are happening right now with the police.”
“See, Mississippi is not actually Mississippi’s problem, Mississippi is America’s problem because if America wanted to do something about what has been going on in Mississippi, it could have stopped by now. It wouldn’t have been 40 and 50 churches bombed and burned.”
“You see, and this all the burnings and bombings going on was done to us in our houses. Nobody ever said too much about that, and nothing was done. But let something be burned by a black man and then my God, you know.”
“You see, the flag is drenched in our blood, because so many of our ancestors have never accepted slavery. We had to live under it, we never wanted it. So we know that this flag is drenched in our blood. So what the young people are saying now is give us a chance to be young men, respected as a man, as we know this country was built on the backs of Black people across this country, and if we don’t have it, you ain’t gone have it either, cause we gone tear it up. That’s what they’re saying. And people ought to understand this. I don’t see why they don’t understand it.”
“They know what they’ve done to us. All across this country, they know what they’ve done to us.”
“This country is desperately sick. And man is on the critical list. I really don’t know where we go from here.”
