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

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

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

Black Americans during the 1960s were fighting to obtain rights already promised to them during the era of Reconstruction.

[Y]ou’ve never heard a room flying [like one] Fannie Lou set afire,” Norton explained.7 After Hamer spoke, Norton added, those who were listening “never needed to hear anyone else speak [on the issue] again.”8

We want people over us that’s concerned about the people because we are human beings. . . . And we can no longer ignore the fact that we can’t sit down and wait for things to change because as long as they can keep their feet on our neck, they will always do it. But it’s time for us to stand up and be women and men. —FANNIE LOU HAMER1

Those who supported forced sterilization devalued Black life, but they also hoped to profit from Black women’s suffering in whatever form it took. White medical professionals and staff stood to financially profit when completing forced sterilizations. By one estimate, Fannie Lou Hamer’s initial procedure to remove a small tumor would have grossed t

40 percent were women of color—most of whom were African American.70 During the Jim Crow era, impoverished Black women in the Deep South were frequently subjected to hysterectomies or tubal ligations against their will and without their knowledge.

“The registrar brought out a huge black book and he pointed out a section to me with the sixteenth section of the constitution of Mississippi and he told me to copy that section, and it was dealing with de facto laws,” Hamer explained.35 “And I knowed about as much about a de facto law as a horse knows about New Year’s,” she remarked with honesty a

She knew from past experience that leaders could come from all backgrounds—even those who lacked financial resources and formal education or had a marginalized social status. As she traveled across the nation, she recognized that the true test of leadership was the ability to empower others to act. This