Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper-turned-civil rights activist, is well known for the impassioned testimony she delivered at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

Far fewer people are familiar with the speeches she 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 selected 21 of Hamer’s most important speeches and testimonies for their book, The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It is.

As the first volume to exclusively showcase Hamer’s talents as an orator, the book includes speeches from the better part of her 15-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 also include a full-length oral history interview Hamer granted at her home in 1972 and 1973.

Through their extensive research and subsequent book, The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer, Brooks and Houck reveal that there is still much to learn about from the valiant Black freedom movement activist.