Fannie Lou Hamer Quotes

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.

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.

When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don't speak out ain't nobody going to speak out for you.

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

Nobody's free until everybody's free.

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

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

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.

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.

Righteousness exalts a nation. Hate just makes people miserable.

It's time for America to get right.

There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.

You don't have to like everybody, but you have to love everybody.

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

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.

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.

This white man who is saying "it takes time." For three hundred and more years they have had "time," and now it is time for them to listen.

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

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

When I liberate others, I liberate myself.

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.

just because people are fat, it doesn't mean they are well fed. The cheapest foods are the fattening ones, not the most nourishing.

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.

A black woman's body was never hers alone.

We didnt come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired.

To support whatever is right, and to bring in justice where weve had so much injustice.

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.

if I fall, I will fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.

[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.

Actually, the world and America is upset and the only way to bring about a change is to upset it more.

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.

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.

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.

I am determined to get every Negro in the state of Mississippi registered.

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.

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!

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.

My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school didn't last but four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear.

We are here to work side-by-side with this "black" man in trying to bring liberation to all our people!

You know I'm not hung up on this liberating myself from the "black" man - I'm not going to try that thing.

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."

I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered and nothing, I mean nothing has been done about that.

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.

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.

That's why I believe in Christianity because the Scriptures said: "The things that have been done in the dark will be known on the house tops."

The people at home will work hard and actually all of them think it was important that we hade the decision that we did make not to compromise; because we didn't have anything to compromise for.

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.

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.

I would like to talk about some of the things that happened that made me know that there was something wrong in the south from a child.

I believe in Christianity because the Scriptures said: "The things that have been done in the dark will be known on the house tops."