Quotes from Fannie Lou Hamer

If I am truly free, who can tell me how much of my freedom I can have today?

We hadn't heard anything about registering to vote because when you see this flat land in here, when the people would get out of the fields, if they had a radio, they'd be too tired to play it. So we didn't know what was going on in the rest of the state, even, much less in other places.

I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote.

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.

This white man who is saying "it takes time." For three hundred and more years they have had "time," and now it is time for them to listen.

We serve God by serving our fellow man; kids are suffering from malnutrition. People are going to the fields hungry. If you are a Christian, we are tired of being mistreated.

No. What would I look like fighting for equality with the white man? I don't want to go down that low. I want the true democracy that'll raise me and that white man up raise America up.

They talked about how it was our rights as human beings to register and vote. I never knew we could vote before. Nobody ever told us.

I feel sorry for anybody that could let hate wrap them up. Ain't no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God's face.

People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.

Every red stripe in that flag represents the black man's blood that has been shed.

You don't have to like everybody, but you have to love everybody.