Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Cities
Stand
Black
Cannot
Discriminated
America
Visited
Every
Divided
People
Unity
City
More quotes by Fannie Lou Hamer
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
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
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
These people in Mississippi State, they are not down all they need is a chance. And I am determined to give my part not for what the Movement can do for me, but what I can do for the Movement to bring about a change in the State of Mississippi.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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
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
Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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
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
Hate won't only destroy us. It will destroy these people that's hating as well.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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
Actually, some of the things I experienced as a child still linger on what the white man has done to the black people in the south!
Fannie Lou Hamer
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Fannie Lou Hamer
You don't have to like everybody, but you have to love everybody.
Fannie Lou Hamer
... 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
I am determined to get every Negro in the state of Mississippi registered.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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
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
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
If I am truly free, who can tell me how much of my freedom I can have today?
Fannie Lou Hamer
