Fannie Lou Hamer Quotes

I had to leave, and my husband was forced to stay on this plantation until after the harvest season was over. And then the man that we had worked for, he’d taken the car, and the most of the few things we had had been stolen.

I’d been in jail, and I’d been beat. I had been to a voter registration workshop, you know, to – they were just training and teaching us how to register, to pass the literacy test.

I feel sorry for anybody that could let hate wrap them up. Ain’t no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God’s face.

I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared [to register to vote] – but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.

With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that’s what really happens.

When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don’t speak out ain’t nobody going to speak out for you.

That’s why I want to change Mississippi. You don’t run away from problems – you just face them.

When I liberate others, I liberate myself.

But you see now baby, whether you have a ph.d., d.d. or no d, we’re in this bag together. And whether you are from Morehouse or Nohouse, we,re still in this bag together.

Black people know what white people mean when they say “law and order”.

You don’t have to like everybody, but you have to love everybody.

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 get my strength.

Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?

White Americans today don’t know what in the world to do because when they put us behind them, that’s where they made their mistake… they put us behind them, and we watched every move they made.

If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.

If I am truly free, who can tell me how much of my freedom I can have today?

One day, I know the struggle will change. There’s got to be a change – not only for Mississippi, not only for the people in the United States, but people all over the world.