Fannie Lou Hamer famous 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.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Trying #Lap #Praying

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

#Running #Religious #Fall

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

#Men #White #Giving

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

#Struggle #People #One Day

We have to build our own power. We have to win every single political office we can, where we have a majority of black people... The question for black people is not, when is the white man going to give us our rights, or when is he going to give us good education for our children, or when is he going to give us jobs-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

#Jobs #Children #Men

Whether you have a Ph.D., or no D, we're in this bag together. And whether you're from Morehouse or Nohouse, we're still in this bag together. Not to fight to try to liberate ourselves from the men - this is another trick to get us fighting among ourselves - but to work together with the black man, then we will have a better chance to just act as human beings, and to be treated as human beings in our sick society.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Fighting #Men #Sick

When I liberate others, I liberate myself.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Justice #Social Justice

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

#People #Three #Movement

Nobody's free until everybody's free.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Freedom

It's time for America to get right.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#America

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

#Tired #Sick #Being Sick

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

#Mistake #Moving #White

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.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Baby #Together #Bags

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

#Bridges #Forget #Praise

All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Party #Sleep #Home

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

#People #Cracks #Causes

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

#Today

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

#Justice #Support #Injustice

A black woman's body was never hers alone.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Black #Body #Black Women

I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Mother #Men #Black

We didnt come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired,
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Tired #Two #Way

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

#Hate

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.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Sorry #Hate #Faces

Christianity is being concerned about [others], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#People #Church #Dollars

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

#Believe #Abortion #Pills

It is only when we speak what is right that we stand a chance at night of being blown to bits in our homes. Can we call this a free country, when I am afraid to go to sleep in my own home in Mississippi?... I might not live two hours after I get back home, but I want to be a part of setting the Negro free in Mississippi.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Country #Home #Sleep

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

#Tired #White #People

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

#Tired #Two #Way

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

#Speak

[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

#Men #Land #Giving

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

#Mean #People #Weight

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

#Freedom #Fall #Fighting

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

#Trying #Littles #Scared

Black people know what white people mean when they say “law and order”.
-- Fannie Lou Hamer

#Mean #Order #Law

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

#Names #White #America

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

#Fighting #Men #White