Ms. Hamer's Words
From Social Justice Wiki
Audio
- Audio clip of Hamer's Oral History
- Audio clip: Fannie Lou Hamer on the roots of her activism [1]
Dedication To The South
"Some people say there’s more possibility for human rights in the South than in the North. That may not be so, but I’ll take a chance on it first. There’s one thing about folks in the South: if they’re dirt, they don’t mind letting you know it. Some of them in the North, they’re not a bit different, but they got that smile on ‘em, and I don’t like a hypocrite. Not that I like the racism, but I’d rather any day for a man to be honest and tell me he hates me, than for him not to be honest and then shoot me when I turn around.
I never thought of leavin’ the South. I love it. I was born here. I watched my folks take a double-blade and chop down trees like that pecan there. A lot of this land the white folks is usin’ now, I watched my parents clean it up. We’re not tryin’ to take this land away from them, but we got a right to stay here. That’s what I told the principal when I put my girl in school. He accused her of stealin’, and I said she didn’t do it. He said “I hate a liar and a thief,” and I told him “Then you don’t hate my people, you hate yours. If your people hadn’t stole from my people, we’d own this country.
People who tell me to go back to Africa, I got an answer for them. I say when all the Italians go back to Italy, and all the Germans go back to Germany, and all the Frenchmen go back to France and all the Chinese go back to China, and when they give the Indians their land back and they get on the Mayflower and go back to where they came from, then I will go home too.
So I ain’t givin’ up. I’m stayin’ right here in the South, in Mississippi. We got to treat each other right, ‘cause we’re in this thing together, and if the white people survive, we’re gonna survive too."
The Women's Movement
"About liberating myself from the black man-- I’m not going to try that thing. I got a black husband, six feet three, 240 pounds with a 14 shoe, that I don’t want to be liberated from. But we are here to work side by side with this black man in trying to bring liberation to all people.”
“I am a woman, strong as any woman my age and size normally, but I am no man. I can think but I am still a woman and I am a mother, as are most women. I can carry the message but the burdens of the nation and the world must be shouldered by men. Decisions concerning life, comfort and security must finally rest in the hands of men. Women can be strength for men, women can help with the decision making, but men will ultimately take the action.”