It’s time for America to get right. — Fannie Lou Hamer

And every time i hear it now, i just double over laughing because it’s not true; it hasn’t been true … but we are going to make it true. — Fannie Lou Hamer

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. — Fannie Lou Hamer

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. — Fannie Lou Hamer

I went almost naked to see that my mother was kept decent and treated as a human being for the first time in all of her life. — Fannie Lou Hamer

My mother got down sick in 53 and she lived with me, an invalid, until she passed away in 1961. And during the time she was staying with me sometime I would be worked so hard I couldn’t sleep at night. — Fannie Lou Hamer

Nobody’s free until everybody’s free. — Fannie Lou Hamer

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

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

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

Black people know what white people mean when they say ‘law and order’. — 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

A black woman’s body was never hers alone. — 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

Every red stripe in that flag represents the black man’s blood that has been shed. — Fannie Lou Hamer

I am determined to get every Negro in the state of Mississippi registered. — Fannie Lou Hamer

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. — Fannie Lou Hamer

We didn’t come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired. — 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

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

I don’t want equal rights with the white man; if I did, I’d be a thief and a murderer. — 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

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

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

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

Now, we’ve got to make some changes in this country, the changes we have to have in this country are going to be for the liberation of all people–because nobody’s free until everybody’s free. — Fannie Lou Hamer

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

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

That’s why I want to change Mississippi. You don’t run away from problems–you just face them. — Fannie Lou Hamer

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

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

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

Why should I leave Ruleville, and why should I leave Mississippi? I go to the big city, and with the kind of education they give us in Mississippi, I got problems. I’d wind up in a soup line there. — Fannie Lou Hamer

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. — Fannie Lou Hamer

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