Home > Author > Fannie Lou Hamer
1 " Every red stripe in that flag represents the black man's blood that has been shed. "
― Fannie Lou Hamer
2 " I will never forget, one day [when I] was six years old and I was playing beside the road and this plantation owner drove up to me and stopped and asked me, `could I pick cotton.' I told him I didn't know and he said, `Yes, you can. I will give you things that you want from the commissary store,' and he named things like crackerjacks and sardines--and it was a huge list that he called off. So I picked the 30 pounds of cotton that week, but I found out what actually happened was he was trapping me into beginning the work I was to keep doing and I never did get out of his debt again. My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school didn't last four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear. "
3 " Whether you have a Ph. D. or no D. we're in this bag together. "
4 " I don't want equal rights with the white man; if I did, I'd be a thief and a murderer. "
5 " If I am truly free, who can tell me how much of my freedom I can have today? "
6 " When they asked for those to raise their hands who'd go down to the courthouse the next day, I raised mine. Had it high up as I could get it. I guess if I'd had any sense I'd've been a little scared, but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do to me was kill me and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember. "
7 " You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap. "
8 " Nobody’s free until everybody’s free. "
9 " Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America? "
10 " Sometimes it seems like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom. "
11 " Y’all is nice. You must be Christian people "
