Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America

America is divided against itself because they don’t want us [Black people] to have even the ballot here in Mississippi. If we had been treated right all these years, they wouldn’t be afraid for us to get the ballot.”75

came when I asked my mother one day why I wasn’t white. She was a woman who believed deeply that black was beautiful and not a shade less than beautiful,” she said firmly.37 Hamer elaborated on this point years later, emphasizing that her mother worked to cultivate Black pride in her children. “So my mother told me,” Hamer recalled, “number one, sh

We hadn’t heard anything about registering to vote, because when you see this flat land in here, when the people would get out of the fields if they had a radio, they’d be too tired to play it. So we didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the state, even, much less in other places.”73

Born in Mississippi on October 6,

rendition of “This Little Light of Mine” no doubt soothed hearts and minds: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine / This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine / Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”45 Those words became a guiding mantra in Hamer’s life and came to embody her life’s mission long before she entered the

landowners in the South relied on cotton production—and the exploited labor of Black people—to maintain their economic power.

And through her example, I learned to think less about what I don’t have and instead focus on what I do have and how it can best be of use in the service of others. Hamer

now, but one day if you respect yourself other people will have to respect you.’”38

the age of forty-four, Hamer set out to let her light shine when she became a member of SNCC, working alongside many of the activists who had played such a pivotal role in her entrance into the civil rights movement.