Quotes by Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer

… 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 me and I don’t know them because all we had was taken away from us. And I became kind of angry; I felt the anger of why this had to happen to us. We were so stripped and robbed of our background, we wind up with nothing.

People

Taken

Wind

[On her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. [But] if you give him land, he will grow his own food.

Giving

Land

Men

A black woman’s body was never hers alone.

Black

Black Women

Body

Actually, the world and America is upset and the only way to bring about a change is to upset it more.

America

Upset

World

All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. 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?

Home

Party

Sleep

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

Law

Mean

Order

I do remember, one time, a man came to me after the students began to work in Mississippi and he said the white people were getting tired and they were getting tense and anything might happen. Well, I asked him “how long he thinks we had been getting tired”? I have been tired for 46 years and my parents was tired before me and their parents were tired, and I have always wanted to do something that would help some of the things I would see going on among Negroes that I didn’t like and I don’t like now.

Men

Thinking

Tired

I don’t know about the press, but I know in the town where I live everybody was aware that I was in Africa, because I remember after I got back some of the people told me that Mayor Dura of our town said he just wished they would boil me in tar.

People

Remember

Towns

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.

Faces

Hate

Sorry

I have just as much right to stay in America – in fact, the black people have contributed more to America than any other race, because our kids have fought here for what was called “democracy”; our mothers and fathers were sold and bought here for a price. So all I can say when they say “go back to Africa,” I say “when you send the Chinese back to China, the Italians back to Italy, etc., and you get on that Mayflower from whence you came, and give the Indians their land back, who really would be here at home?”

Father

Home

Mother

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Abortion

America

Believe

Black

Black Women

Blood

Body

Bridges

Causes

Children

Cities

Country

Cracks

Diversity

Done

Eye

Faces

Father

Fighting

Firsts

Forget

Freedom

Girl

Giving

Great Society

Hard Work

Hate

Home

Ifs

Inspiring

Intelligent

Jail

June

Justice

Knows

Land

Law

Made

Mean

Men

Miserable

Mistake

Mother

Movement

Moving

Naked

Names

Needs

Night

One Day

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Quotes by Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer

[On her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. [But] if you give him land, he will grow his own food.

A black woman’s body was never hers alone.

Actually, the world and America is upset and the only way to bring about a change is to upset it more.

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

I don’t know about the press, but I know in the town where I live everybody was aware that I was in Africa, because I remember after I got back some of the people told me that Mayor Dura of our town said he just wished they would boil me in tar.

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.

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Topics by Fannie Lou Hamer

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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