Most people who have heard of Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) are
aware of the impassioned testimony that this Mississippi sharecropper
and civil rights activist delivered at the 1964 Democratic National
Convention. Far fewer people are familiar with the speeches Hamer
delivered at the 1968 and 1972 conventions, to say nothing of
addresses she gave closer to home, or with Malcolm X in Harlem, or
even at the founding of the National Women's Political Caucus. Until
now, dozens of Hamer's speeches have been buried in archival
collections and in the basements of movement veterans. After years of
combing library archives, government documents, and private
collections across the country, Maegan Parker Brooks and Davis W.
Houck have selected twenty-one of Hamer's most important speeches and
testimonies.
As the first volume
to exclusively showcase Hamer's talents as an orator, this book
includes speeches from the better part of her fifteen-year activist
career delivered in response to occasions as distinct as a Vietnam
War Moratorium Rally in Berkeley, California, and a summons to
testify in a Mississippi courtroom.
Brooks and Houck
have coupled these heretofore unpublished speeches and testimonies
with brief critical descriptions that place Hamer's words in context.
The editors also include the last full-length oral history interview
Hamer granted, a recent oral history interview Brooks conducted with
Hamer's daughter, as well as a bibliography of additional primary and
secondary sources. The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer
demonstrates that there is still much to learn about and from this
valiant black freedom movement activist.