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

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
Mean
People
Law
White
Black
Order

More quotes by 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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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 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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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
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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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In fact, one day I was going to Jackson and I saw a huge sign that U.S. Senator John Stennis was speaking that night for the White Citizens Council in Yazoo City and they also have a State Charter that they may set up for private schools. It is no secret.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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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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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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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
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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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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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Hate won't only destroy us. It will destroy these people that's hating as well.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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I see so many ways America uses to rob Negroes and it is sinful and America can't keep holding on, and doing these things.
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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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
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Nobody's free until everybody's free.
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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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
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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.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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This problem is not only in Mississippi. During the time I was in the Convention in Atlantic City, I didn't get any threats from Mississippi. The threatening letters were from Philadelphia, Chicago and other big cities.
Fannie Lou Hamer