Fannie Lou Hamer Quotes

One day, I know the struggle will change. There’s got to be a change – not only for Mississippi, not only for the people in the United States, but people all over the world.

Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.

Black people know what white people mean when they say “law and order”.

I’d been in jail, and I’d been beat. I had been to a voter registration workshop, you know, to – they were just training and teaching us how to register, to pass the literacy test.

That’s why I want to change Mississippi. You don’t run away from problems – you just face them.

Hate won’t only destroy us. It will destroy these people that’s hating as well.

I had to leave, and my husband was forced to stay on this plantation until after the harvest season was over. And then the man that we had worked for, he’d taken the car, and the most of the few things we had had been stolen.

Christianity is being concerned about [others], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That’s what God is all about, and that’s where I get my strength.

If the white man gives you anything – just remember when he gets ready he will take it right back. We have to take for ourselves.

I’m showing the people that a Negro can run for office.

America that is divided against itself cannot stand, and we cannot say we have all of this unity they say we have when black people are being discriminated against in every city in America I have visited.

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

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.

If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.