Fannie Lou Hamer Quotes
They - you know, when we walked in - when I walked in with the two white men that had carried me down - and they cursed me all the way down. They would ask me questions, and when I would try to answer, they would tell me to hush.
Hamer, Fannie Lou. "Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention." 22 Aug. 1964, Atlantic City, NJ. Published in The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It Is, edited by Maegan Parker Brooks and Davis W. Houck, University Press of Mississippi, 2011, p. 44.
This statement was made long after slavery had been abolished and Jim Crow was on the rise in the South.
Parker and other escaped slaves in Christiana fought off slave catchers and killed the slave owner leading them. Charged with treason, he escaped to Canada with his family and lived there the rest of his life. While not a polished writer, after he himself had escaped and went to Christiana and leaned to read and write. He wrote this narrative of his life as a slave—one of the few written works we have from slaves.
The law enforcement officers were the ones who broke the law when they beat and brutalized the peaceful civil rights marchers. The “white niggers” refer to the white marchers including clergy.
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting and women's rights activist, community organizer, and a leader in the civil rights movement. She was the co-founder and vice-chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Hamer also organized Mississippi's Freedom Summer along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was also a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, an organization created to recruit, train, and support women of all races who wish to seek election to government office.
