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

The incident, forever etched in Hamer’s mind, illuminates the lengths to which white landowners went to maintain their wealth and preserve white supremacy. Indeed, the expansion of landownership and wealth for white people—at the expense of Black people— helped to keep white supremacy firmly in place. It was a lesson Hamer learned at a tender age a

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.

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

Born in Mississippi on October 6,

Until I am free,” she boldly told the mostly white audience members at the University of Wisconsin in 1971, “you are not either.”17 In so many ways, Hamer’s words are timeless.

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

then she told the story of her own experiences with state-sanctioned violence—she recounted the details of the severe beating she received in that Winona jail cell in 1963.12 As she reflected on her own painful experiences and the experiences of other Black people in the South, Hamer could not help but to “question America.” “Is this America,” she

1917, Hamer was the youngest of twenty children.

Responding to those who insisted on gradualism—waiting for the “right” moment to secure Black rights and liberation—Hamer looked to history as her guide. “For three hundred years,” she explained, “we’ve given them [white people] time. And I’ve been tired so long,” she continued, “now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. We want a change in