Top 42 Lou Hamer Quotes
#1. That is part of why we must keep talking about Fannie Lou Hamer and about our history as a party and as a nation. We can't forget. If we forget, we can get self-righteous. We are great, but we had to grow into that greatness. Let's not forget that we shut people out.
Leah D. Daughtry
#2. Marriage equality is a very middle-class issue and voting rights is a very working-class issue. If you do not vote, who are you speaking for? Who will be the next Fannie Lou Hamer? If not you or someone you know, then who?
Darryl Pinckney
#3. Some people think that [it was] Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea to have a boycott. It was a black woman, a teacher, who said we should boycott the buses. You had people like Fannie Lou Hamer; Delta, Mississippi.
John Lewis
#4. Mrs. (Fanie Lou) Hamer, like her mother, also kept weapons nearby in case she needed them: 'I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom & the first cracker even looks like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won't write his mama again.
Charles E. Cobb Jr.
#5. When I saw Fannie Lou Hamer speech I said, "Well, how did this Democratic Party that Miss Hamer is talking about, become the Democratic Party that now is the party of the African-American community?"
Leah D. Daughtry
#6. We are here to work side-by-side with this "black" man in trying to bring liberation to all our people!
Fannie Lou Hamer
#7. With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that's what really happens.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#8. [On her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. [But] if you give him land, he will grow his own food.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#9. Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa. We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bo ught them; white people changed their names my maiden name is supposed to be Townsend, but really, what is my maiden name? What is my name?
Fannie Lou Hamer
#10. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#12. Righteousness exalts a nation. Hate just makes people miserable.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#13. We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we'd gotten here. We didn't come all this way for no two seats, 'cause all of us is tired.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#15. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#16. Just because people are fat, it doesn't mean they are well fed. The cheapest foods are the fattening ones, not the most nourishing.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#17. 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
#18. When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don't speak out ain't nobody going to speak out for you.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#19. To support whatever is right, and to bring in justice where weve had so much injustice.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#22. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#23. We didnt come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired,
Fannie Lou Hamer
#24. But you see now baby, whether you have a ph.d., d.d. or no d, we're in this bag together. And whether you are from Morehouse or Nohouse, we,re still in this bag together.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#25. There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#26. Black people know what white people mean when they say "law and order".
Fannie Lou Hamer
#27. The methods used to take human lives, such as abortion, the pill, the ring, etc., amounts to genocide. I believe that legal abortion is legal murder ...
Fannie Lou Hamer
#28. I am determined to get every Negro in the state of Mississippi registered.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#29. Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#30. I feel sorry for anybody who would let hate wrap them up. Ain't no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God's face.
- Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer
Deborah Wiles
#31. If I fall, I will fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#32. I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared [to register to vote] - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#33. You don't have to like everybody, but you have to love everybody.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#34. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#35. Sometimes it seem 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. I'm not backing off.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#36. I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#37. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#38. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#39. White Americans today don't know what in the world to do because when they put us behind them, that's where they made their mistake ... they put us behind them, and we watched every move they made.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#40. If I am truly free, who can tell me how much of my freedom I can have today?
Fannie Lou Hamer
#41. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#42. 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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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