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

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

Her remarks underscored how the fate of Black people in the United States was—and still is—connected to all Americans, regardless of race, class, or even location. America’s mistreatment of and disregard for Black people in Mississippi, Hamer argued, signaled the nation’s failure to live up to its promises. And this failure was one that fundamental

Born in Mississippi on October 6,

is a manifesto, deeply rooted in history, for anyone committed to social justice. The book challenges us all to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual from the past as we confront contemporary concerns, many of which consumed Hamer’s mind during her lifetime. More than forty years since Hamer’s death, her words

This system—designed by white landowners—created a cycle of unending dependency, debt, and debt peonage for Black Americans, with little prospect for landownership or the accumulation of wealth.16 In a typical family of sharecroppers, each member was expected to contribute to the cultivation of crops, and children were no exception. Each

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.

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

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

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.