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If this is a Great Society, I'd hate to see a bad one.

Fannie Lou Hamer

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Fannie Lou Hamer
Age: 59 †
Born: 1917
Born: October 6
Died: 1977
Died: March 14
Autobiographer
Political Leader
Politician
Montgomery County
Mississippi
Fannie Lou Townsend
Society
Hate
Great

More quotes by Fannie Lou Hamer

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The Mississippi is not the only river. There's the Tallahatchie and the Big Black. People have been put in the river year after year, these things been happening.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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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
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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
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After we testified before the Credentials Committee in Atlantic City, their Mississippi representative testified also. He said I got 600 votes but when they made the count in Mississippi, I was told I had 388 votes. So actually it is no telling how many votes I actually got.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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I don't know about the press, but I know in the town where I live everybody was aware that I was in Africa, because I remember after I got back some of the people told me that Mayor Dura of our town said he just wished they would boil me in tar.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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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
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In coming to Atlantic City, we believed strongly that we were right. In fact, it was just right for us to come to challenge the seating of the regular Democratic Party from Mississippi. But we didn't think when we got there that we would meet people, that actually the other leaders of the Movement would differ with what we felt was right.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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If I am truly free, who can tell me how much of my freedom I can have today?
Fannie Lou Hamer
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... some of my people could have been left [in Africa] and are living there. And I can't understand them and they don't know me and I don't know them because all we had was taken away from us. And I became kind of angry I felt the anger of why this had to happen to us. We were so stripped and robbed of our background, we wind up with nothing.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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It is our right to stay here and we will stay and stand up for what belongs to us as American citizens, because they can't say that we haven't had patience.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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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
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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
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Righteousness exalts a nation. Hate just makes people miserable.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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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
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I am determined to get every Negro in the state of Mississippi registered.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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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
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We didnt come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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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
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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
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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