Fannie Lou Hamer Quotes - Page 3

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• A white man killed the mules and our cows that knocked us right back down. And things got so tough then I began to wish I was white.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Men, White, Wish

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  8 Copy quote

• We are here to work side-by-side with this "black" man in trying to bring liberation to all our people!

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Men, People, Black

  10 Copy quote

• It would bring tears in your eyes to make you think of all those years, the type of brain-washing that this man will use in America to keep us separated from our own people.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Eye, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  19 Copy quote

• All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Party, Home, Sleep

  Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention, delivered 22 August 1964

  19 Copy quote

• I believe in Christianity because the Scriptures said: "The things that have been done in the dark will be known on the house tops."

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Believe, Dark, House

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  5 Copy quote

• [My mother] tried so hard to make life easy for us. Those are the things that forced me to try to do something different and when this Movement came to Mississippi I still feel it is one of the greatest things that ever happened because only a person living in the State of Mississippi knows what it is like to suffer; knows what it is like to be hungry; knows what it is like to have no clothing to wear.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Mother, Suffering, Trying

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  20 Copy quote

• These people in Mississippi State, they are not "down"; all they need is a chance. And I am determined to give my part not for what the Movement can do for me, but what I can do for the Movement to bring about a change in the State of Mississippi.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Giving, People, Needs

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  8 Copy quote

• My mother was a great woman. To look at her from the suffering she had gone through to bring us up - 20 children: 6 girls and 14 boys, but still she taught us to be decent and to respect ourselves, and that is one of the things that has kept me going, even after she passed.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Girl, Mother, Children

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  20 Copy quote

• One of the things I remember as a child: There was a man named Joe Pulliam. He was a great Christian man; but one time, he was living with a white family and this white family robbed him of what he earned. They didn't pay him anything. This white man gave him $150 to go to the hill, (you see, I lived in the Black Belt of Mississippi)... to get another Negro family. Joe Pulliam knew what this white man had been doing to him so he kept the $150 and didn't go.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Christian, Children, Men

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  16 Copy quote

• The President of Guinea, Sekou Toure, came to see us on the 13th. Now you know, I don't know how you can compare this by me being able to see a President of a country when I have just been there two days; and here I have been in America, born in America, and I am 46 years pleading with the President for the last two to three years to just give us a chance-and this President in Guinea recognized us enough to talk to us.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Country, Years, Two

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  22 Copy quote

• My parents would make huge crops of sometimes 55 to 60 bales of cotton. Being from a big family where there were 20 children, it wasn't too hard to pick that much cotton. But my father, year after year, didn't get too much money and I remember he just kept going.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Children, Father, Years

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  12 Copy quote

• I used to question this for years - what did our kids actually fight for? They would go in the service and go through all of that and come right out to be drowned in a river in Mississippi. I found this hypocrisy is all over America.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Kids, Fighting, Years

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  14 Copy quote

• I was treated much better in Africa than I was treated in America. And you see, often I get letters like this: "Go back to Africa."

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  America, Letters, Treated

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  9 Copy quote

• Now many things are beginning to come out and it was truly a reality to me when I went to Africa, to Guinea. The little things that had been taught to me about the African people, that they were "heathens," "savages," and they were just downright stupid people. But when I got to Guinea, we were greeted by the Government of Guinea, which is Black People - and we stayed at a place that was the government building, because we were the guests of the Government.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Stupid, Reality, Government

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  16 Copy quote

• The only thing I really feel is necessary is that the black people, not only in Mississippi, will have to actually upset this applecart. What I mean by that is, so many things are under the cover that will have to be swept out and shown to this whole world, not just to America. This thing they say of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is all on paper.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Mean, Home, Land

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  16 Copy quote

• Actually, some of the things I experienced as a child still linger on; what the white man has done to the black people in the south!

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Children, Men, White Man

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  12 Copy quote

• Actually since the Convention I have gotten so many letters that I have tried to answer but every letter said they thought this decision, not to accept the compromise, was so important. There wasn't one letter I have gotten so far that said we should have accepted the compromise - not one.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Should Have, Decision, Important

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  14 Copy quote

• The 20th of March in 1964, I went before the Secretary of State to qualify to run as an official candidate for Congress from the 2nd Congressional District, and it was easier for me to qualify to run than it was for me to pass the literacy test to be a registered voter. And we had four people to qualify and run in the June primary election be we didn't have enough Negroes registered in Mississippi.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Running, June, People

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  12 Copy quote

• You know what really made me sick? I was in Washington, D.C. at another time reading in a paper where the U.S. gives Byron de la Beckwith - the man who is charged with murdering Medgar Evers - they were giving him so much money for some land and I ask "Is this America?" We can no longer ignore the fact that America is NOT the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Reading, Home, Men

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  13 Copy quote

• My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school didn't last but four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  School, Clothes, Years

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  11 Copy quote

• I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered and nothing, I mean nothing has been done about that.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Mean, Jail, Done

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  10 Copy quote

• I got pictures of us and they would draw big red rings around us and tell what they thought of us. I got a letter said, "I have been shot three times throught the heart. I hope I see your second act." But this white man who wants to stay white, and to think for the Negro, he is not only destroying the Negro, he is destroying himself, because a house divided against itself cannot stand and that same thing applies to America.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  7 Copy quote

• I think there will be great leaders emerging from the State of Mississippi. The people that have the experience to know and the people not interested in letting somebody pat you on the back and tell us "I think it is right." And it is very important for us not to accept a compromise and after I got back to Mississippi, people there said it was the most important step that had been taken.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Taken, Thinking, People

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  8 Copy quote

• I saw how the Government was run there [in Africa] and I saw where black people were running the banks. I saw, for the first time in my life, a black stewardess walking through a plane and that was quite an inspiration for me.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Running, Inspiration, Government

  Source: www.encyclopedia.com

  12 Copy quote

• You know I'm not hung up on this liberating myself from the "black" man - I'm not going to try that thing.

  Fannie Lou Hamer

  Men, Black, Trying

  10 Copy quote

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