We hadn't heard anything about registering to vote because when you see this flat land in here, when the people would get out of the fields, if they had a radio, they'd be too tired to play it. So we didn't know what was going on in the rest of the state, even, much less in other places.
— Fannie Lou Hamer
I had to leave, and my husband was forced to stay on this plantation until after the harvest season was over. And then the man that we had worked for, he'd taken the car, and the most of the few things we had had been stolen.
I was forced away from the plantation because I wouldn't go back and withdraw, you know, my literacy test after I had tried to take it. I wouldn't go back.
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.
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.
Every red stripe in that flag represents the black man's blood that has been shed.
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.
There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
If I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off.
They - you know, when we walked in - when I walked in with the two white men that had carried me down - and they cursed me all the way down. They would ask me questions, and when I would try to answer, they would tell me to hush.
On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me.
They talked about how it was our rights as human beings to register and vote. I never knew we could vote before. Nobody ever told us.
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.
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.
What I really feel is necessary is that the black people in this country wil have to upset this apple cart. We can no longer ignore the fact that America is not the... land of the free and the home of the brave.
I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote.
I'd been in jail, and I'd been beat. I had been to a voter registration workshop, you know, to - they were just training and teaching us how to register, to pass the literacy test.
It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time.
That's why I want to change Mississippi. You don't run away from problems - you just face them.
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?
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.
Nobody's free until everybody's free.
I'm showing the people that a Negro can run for office.
