Personal Testimonies
Throughout her activist career, which spanned just 15 years, Fannie Lou Hamer touched the lives of tens of thousands of people with her words, her generosity and her motivational nature. She empowered people. She moved people. She loved - people. And people loved her. This page allows us the privilege to hear from some of those who knew her and worked with her, as they share their fondest memories and experiences with their beloved colleague.
Their comments were contributed as a special tribute and specifically for this page on our website and should not be reproduced or copied without permission (flhamerica@gmail.com). We thank these civil rights giants, historians, writers and activists for their willingness to share their thoughts with the world.
Euvester Simpson
“Reflections on Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer”
“I had heard about Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer several months before I met her. I heard about her seeming fearlessness, and her amazing singing voice, and about her ability to move people to action with her powerful speeches. I finally got the chance to see her in person in the early Spring of 1963 at a mass meeting in Greenwood, MS. But I really got to know her when a group of civil rights activists from the Mississippi Delta traveled to Charleston, SC to attend a week-long Citizen Education Workshop in June 1963. It was on this trip that I learned what an amazing person Mrs. Hamer was.
What I learned about Mrs. Hamer is that she was easy to get to know. She was personable, and down to earth. She loved to laugh. Mrs. Hamer never talked down to me even though I was 17 years old, and she was in her mid-forties when we first met. She believed that everyone had something of value to offer. However, there were boundaries that were set, and I never forgot that I was a teenager, and she was the adult. I never called her Fannie Lou—it was always “Mrs. Hamer.”
Whenever I saw her, she always reminded me to call my mother to let her know that I was ok. We became friends. She taught me Freedom Songs. I remember riding on the bus to Atlantic City to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Mrs. Hamer asked me to sit by her so we could sing. “This Little of Mine” was her signature song and on that trip, she taught me a verse that I had never heard before:
“Monday, he gave me the gift of love, Tuesday, manna from above, Wednesday, he told me to watch and pray, Thursday, he gave me a little more grace, Friday, he gave me peace of mind, Saturday, he gave me love divine, Sunday, he told me to go to church just to let my little light shine.”
Mrs. Hamer was fearless because she had mastered her fear of death. She once said “If I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing down.”
The greatest fear that most of us have is the fear of death. When the fear of death is conquered, there is an understanding that takes place within, and we come to know that our true nature is undying and continues for all eternity. When this takes place, we know that there is nothing on earth that can truly harm us.
When I heard Mrs. Hamer sing this song later in mass meetings and other places after we were released from jail, it sounded different. I realized it was no longer a dirge-like song that was pleading and begging Jesus to walk with her. It had changed to an invitation for Him to come and join her on this journey and be her friend as she traveled through this life speaking her truth, demanding freedom, justice, and respect for all people because we are all God’s children.
Mrs. Hamer was a woman of faith. She believed in the power of prayer. But she also believed in the power of activism. While speaking at a mass meeting in Indianola, MS, she said, “You can pray until you faint, but if you don’t get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap. She also said “We can’t ask the white man to give us everything (education, voting), we have to build our own power. If the white man gives you something, you can be assured that he will take it back.”
Mrs. Hamer was brilliant. She used her God-given intellect to speak truth to power and to help build a better world for all of us. So many of the things Mrs. Hamer said remain relevant today.”
(Photos of Ms. Simpson and Fannie Lou Hamer at a rally in Ohio during Freedom Summer 1964 courtesy of Ms. Euvester Simpson)
When we were returning to Mississippi from the Citizenship Education Workshop in South Carolina, six of us were arrested in Winona, MS. I shared a jail cell with Mrs. Hamer. She and several others were brutally beaten. The brutality and hatred that we experienced in the Winona jail had a profound effect on all of us and especially on Mrs. Hamer. I believe this was a turning point in her life. I also believe it was during that horrific night in the Winona jail, that she overcame her fear of death. During that long night I tried to soothe her pain and bring her fever down by applying cool, wet washcloths to her face and swollen hands. After some of her pain had subsided, she started singing very quietly and she asked me to sing with her. That night I learned that her favorite song was “Walk With Me Lord.”
Lawrence ‘Larry’ Fishman
“Rose and Fannie Lou”
“My mother, Rose Fishman, was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who came to America in the early 1900s. Her father began his American life as a clothing peddler on the streets of Boston. Rose inherited her passion for social justice from her mother who was jailed and forced to flee the old country because of her politics.
Social activism came early for Rose from protesting the draft (post WWII) to serving as a delegate to Henry Wallace’s Presidential Campaign in 1948 for the Progressive party.
She was an outstanding student and had tremendous “saychel” or common sense. Rose always knew things. She was a Quiz Kid. “Quiz Kids” was a Chicago-based radio program popular in the 1940s and 1950s which later became a television program. She was a local finalist, but did not make it to the national round in Chicago.
Rose soon joined the fight for Civil Rights and became a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the most important groups in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
She also attended the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
It was through her work at SNCC that she met and became friends with Fannie Lou Hamer. Rose developed a personal and close friendship with Fannie Lou when she was speaking in the greater Boston area and needed a place to stay.
It was a relationship that Rose cherished.
Fannie Lou referred to Rose as her “second mother” because of all the financial support, clothes, bedding and other gifts that she received from her. She confided to Rose her deep emotional and physical anguish that is heartbreaking to read.
Rose was careful to save the many letters they exchanged understanding their historic significance and I recall her telling me when she donated them to the archive. The letters reference clothing and other items that were collected and sent down. For many years, Rose would reach out to the local community to solicit items that she carefully washed, folded, and packaged.
The archived letters reflect the impact of those gifts and the appreciation that was felt by Fannie Lou.
In the Summer of 2013, one of Fannie Lou’s daughter, Virgie, on a whim tracked me down as she remembered the family name and the return address. (Fannie Lou adopted two daughters and then two grandchildren after the older daughter’s death). Virgie recalled appreciatively receiving care packages from Rose of clothes and presents through the mid-1970s. Over forty years later, she still felt the generosity and love from Rose.
I was quite young during the visits, so it is difficult to remember many details. The photo of myself with Fannie Lou playing on the floor has always reinforced my memory of her presence with my family.
I also enjoy the photo of Fannie Lou, my father and myself - as you can see the amusement in their eyes as they look upon the five-year-old me!
My parent’s activism has always been a deep sense of pride for my brother Paul, my sister Debbie and me. And their lives continue to be an inspiration.”
(Photos of Rose Fishman, Rose Fishman and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ralph and young Lawrence Fishman courtesy of Lawrence Fishman)
One summer she attended the Encampment for Citizenship, a liberal camp run by the New York Society of Ethical Culture located in New York State. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was on the Board of Directors, came to speak to the campers and Rose was inspired. Her visit had an enormous, motivating influence on her life and her future social activism. The camp was attacked as “socialist” during the McCarthy Red Scare era of the 1950s and Martin Luther King, Jr. was later a supporter.
Following in her mother’s footsteps, Rose was engaged politically. She participated in protests against war and nuclear weapons and was featured and photographed in local newspapers. She attended the 1948 Progressive Party Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Former Vice President Henry Wallace who also served as different Cabinet Secretaries in the FDR administration ran as a third-party candidate for the Presidency. The Progressive Party was a very left-wing organization and far ahead of its time. They believed in the end of all forms of Jim Crow (segregation), government ownership of the power industry, extending the welfare and social security systems, and a more accommodating stance toward the Soviet Union.
Charles O. Prickett
“During the summer of 1964, I was one of about 1,000 volunteers who came to Mississippi to assist SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee), CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) in the struggle for civil rights.
During that summer, we operated Freedom Schools, organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), tried to register Black people to vote, and worked with Black farmers to put a Black farmer on the U.S.D.A. local board of the ASCS (Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service). But one of my activities was to assist Richard Beymer in making his film, “A Regular Bouquet.” Richard was the star of “West Side Story” (Tony) opposite Natalie Wood (Maria) in 1961.
Richard and I traveled across Mississippi, filming and documenting Freedom Schools, voter registration projects, mass meetings, and a host of activities that were at the heart of the Mississippi Freedom Summer. One of our stops was in Sunflower County, including Ruleville, Mississippi, at the home of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer.
Mrs. Hamer is heard on the film, “I began by volunteerin” and detailed her work as a civil rights activist. She proceeded to explain to Richard and me what it was like for her and others like her, living in Mississippi and trying to register to vote. She said that she and others went on a bus to the courthouse in Indianola, the county seat of Sunflower County, to try and register to vote. They all filled out the necessary forms, which had the question, “By whom are you employed?” that Mrs. Hamer filled out.
When she returned to the plantation where she had resided for nearly 20 years, Mr. Marlow, the plantation owner, told her that he heard she had tried to register to vote. Clearly, the Registrar of Voters of Sunflower County had called him. He told her to return to Indianola and remove her name from the list of prospective voters or leave the plantation. She left that night.
The house where she was staying was sprayed with bullets that night as she slept. We sat together on that couch for a few hours while Mrs. Hamer chronicled her life as a sharecropper and then as a civil rights activist. She told us she was to appear on national television to recount her attempt to register to vote in front of the Credentials Committee of the National Democratic Party at their nominating convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. That day, she invited Richard and me to stay at her house during her absence and watch her testimony in her living room.
Mrs. Hamer had love and compassion for everyone, and we were privileged to accept her kindness.
We watched her testimony, along with several other civil rights workers. Mrs. Hamer’s testimony in front of the Credentials Committee was part of the Democratic National Convention’s process for admitting delegations to the floor of the convention. The delegates would participate in the nomination and election of the Democratic Party’s 1964 nominee for President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson. The main argument for the Mississippi Freedom Democrats was that they represented the entire State of Mississippi, whereas the regular (all white) Mississippi Democratic Party represented only half of the citizens of Mississippi.
At the time, Mississippi was about half Black and half white. This argument ultimately failed, and the Credentials Committee offered the Freedom Democrats two at large seats. This offer was summarily rejected, and the entire Freedom Democrat delegation returned to Mississippi.
Mrs. Hamer captured the entire country with her illustration of life in Mississippi as a Black woman. She began her testimony in the afternoon that was covered live on national television. But there was a sudden interruption, as President Johnson called a news conference at the White House. The networks immediately ended their coverage of Mrs. Hamer’s testimony and went to the White House.
When the news conference began, President Johnson was asked what was the purpose of his emergency news conference. President Johnson replied that this day was the nine-month anniversary of President Kennedy’s death in Dallas, Texas. The real reason for this hastily called news conference was to end the live coverage of Mrs. Hamer’s testimony in front of the Democratic Party’s Credentials Committee, which President Johnson and his aids thought was putting the Democratic Party in a bad light.
This ill-conceived strategy backfired, as the three television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) covered Mrs. Hamer’s testimony in full and in prime time that evening. Millions of Americans learned that Mrs. Hamer was a former sharecropper who, with her husband, had been thrown off the plantation where they worked because she had tried to register to vote. Fannie Lou Hamer was in the moment and mesmerizing. She never faltered in her riveting account of life in Mississippi as a Black woman.
The entire country finally got a taste of what it was like to be Black in America, and to try to engage in our democratic process by merely trying to register to vote.
Reaction was swift and universal: Mrs. Hamer was an instant media star.
Our democratic system of government was systematically eliminating Black citizens from engaging in choosing our local and state leaders under a broken system that disenfranchised a major portion of the American electorate.
The following year, 1965, President Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, which did away with literacy tests and poll taxes as barriers to the voting process.
Finally, Mrs. Hamer was able to register and vote. And our efforts at organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party bore fruit, as Mississippi became the state with the most Black elected public officials.
There is so much more I can say about the intensely caring person Mrs. Hamer was. She was very clear about what she wanted to achieve and how your individual contribution could help. She was open to sharing her home to anyone, to us – strangers. She was always in the moment and that says a lot about her.”
Dr. Charles O. Prickett is an attorney and a civil rights activist. He is also the author of “Remembering Mississippi Freedom Summer.” He participated in the 1963 March on Washington, the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March.
He often relates his experiences in schools, college classes, civic groups, and other public events. He attended the March on Washington, where Dr. King made his famous “I Have A Dream” speech before hundreds of thousands on the Capital Mall.
He also personally met Dr. King while working on the Selma to Montgomery March. His personal experiences in the civil rights struggle, including the Mississippi Freedom Summer, are riveting and illustrate the difficult and dangerous ongoing struggle for civil rights in our country.
Charles began his activities toward world peace and justice while in high school doing surveys of area businesses to determine if racial discrimination was occurring in his hometown, Carbondale, Illinois. In college, he became a member of the local chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and began picketing local businesses that refused to serve or hire people of color.
(Top photo of Charles O. Prickett courtesy of Christopher Chung of the Press Democrat. The photo of Charles Prickett in 1964 and Richard Beymer sharing sugar cane with a child in the Mississippi Delta in 1964 courtesy of Richard Beymer. A Regular Bouquet was narrated by actor Robert Ryan.)
We first stopped in Indianola, Mississippi, county seat of Sunflower County, for a mass meeting. This meeting is part of “A Regular Bouquet,” and several Black speakers illustrate the significance of such meetings which were banned during Reconstruction and into the present day. One speaker states that “Black people have been killed for attending meetings such as this.” Although there were no laws on the books in the State of Mississippi outlawing such meetings, local officials, and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council threatened the organizers and participants of these gatherings, essentially shutting them down.
After filming the mass meeting and interviewing some of the participants, we traveled to Ruleville and met Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. She was very welcoming and gracious, and invited us to stay at her home, which we did. The following day, we interviewed Mrs. Hamer in her living room as the three of us sat on her couch. Richard began the interview by informing Mrs. Hamer that he was involved in films and filmmaking, and her reply was, “I know who you are.” He was well known nationally and internationally, which included Ruleville, Mississippi, as Mrs. Hamer quietly informed him.
Mrs. Hamer’s interview is a key part of the soundtrack of “A Regular Bouquet,” which begins with a scene of civil rights workers driving in a car through rural Mississippi. The homes we passed were unpainted, built on piers, and all have a front porch. They had one wall, the exterior, and the interior was covered with newspapers glued to the walls to keep out the drafts. These were usually one or two bedroom homes with no running water and no electricity. All had outhouses and a hand pump for water. Often, there was a bucket of water on a table with a long-handled cup next to it for drinking. Everyone used the same cup.
Heather Booth
A renowned organizer and activist, Heather Booth began her remarkable career at the height of the civil rights movement. As a student at the University of Chicago, Heather Booth joined the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, in the campaign for black voting rights, working along side Fannie Lou Hamer.
“Ms. Hamer had a moral center to her that not only guided her actions, but gave greater moral clarity to many of those around her,” Booth said. “When I arrived in Mississippi, our first stop was in Ruleville with Ms. Hamer. She gave a sense of her moral vision at every level of her life.”
When Booth later heard Dr. Martin Luther King say the way to civil rights was through union rights, Booth became a labor organizer.
In 1964, she founded the JANE Underground and later collaborated with several respected leaders such as Julian Bond and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Booth was the Founding Director, now President, of the Midwest Academy, which trains organizers, including some of the early NOW leaders.
Booth has directed and worked on numerous national campaigns, including the 2000 NAACP National Voter Fund, the Health Care Campaign, AFL-CIO, the Alliance for Citizenship (the leading coalition for immigration reform) among many others.
Activist Heather Booth speaks exclusively about her time with Fannie Lou Hamer in this video.
Heather Booth playing guitar for Fannie Lou Hamer and others during the Freedom Summer Project in Mississippi, 1964. Photo courtesy of Wallace Roberts.
Booth, whose activist career spans some 50 years, is one of the leading strategists about progressive issues and electoral campaigns.
Gray is a past president of the Mississippi Press Association and chairman of the MPA Education Foundation board.
Lloyd Gray
Currently the executive director for the Phil Hardin Foundation, that supports educational initiatives in the state of Mississippi, Lloyd Gray was executive editor for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo, Mississippi for more than two decades.
A native Mississippian, Gray is a 1972 graduate of Meridian High School and earned a B.A. Degree in History from Millsaps College in 1976. He started in journalism as a sports writer at The Meridian Star at age 16 and began his professional career as a reporter for the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville. He spent 12 years as a reporter, Capitol correspondent and managing editor for The Sun Herald in Biloxi-Gulfport, before serving as a Mississippi Assistant Secretary of State.
In March 1977, Gray received what proved to be one of the most important assignments he would ever receive, an interview with a severely ailing Fannie Lou Hamer. It would prove to be her last.
“Memories of Mrs. Hamer’s Last Interview”
By Lloyd Gray
“I was a young reporter for the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi, in the fall of 1976, when my editor came to me one day with a special assignment.
“We hear Fannie Lou Hamer is pretty sick with cancer,” she said. “She may not be around much longer. If she’s willing, we need to get an interview with her before she becomes too weak or passes. We owe that to our readers, and to history.”
I knew about Mrs. Hamer, but had never met her. I had seen the riveting footage of her speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. I’d seen other video of her mesmerizing, prophetic speeches against the injustice she and her people had endured. I had heard and read many stories of her courage and tenacity. So I was excited about the prospect of actually sitting down and talking with her.
We were her newspaper. She was a subscriber whose Ruleville home was about 50 miles up the road from our office in Greenville. But I wasn’t sure whether she would be willing to be interviewed, given her health and her recent history of living largely out of the spotlight. Our “news peg” for the interview was a recent award for community service she had received from the Congressional Black Caucus, but the overriding purpose was to capture more of her abundant wisdom for posterity before it was too late.
I gave her a call, and when I identified myself, she readily agreed to an interview in her home.
It was a sunny October morning when I drove to Ruleville with a photographer. When we knocked on the front door of her modest brick home, one among many built by the Freedom Farms Cooperative she helped organize in the ‘60s, she was gracious and welcoming. She ushered us in to her living room bedecked with framed photographs of Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy, and Medgar Evers. We spent the next hour or so in lively conversation.
She was full of enthusiasm about the work she was doing locally to help her neighbors and friends improve their lives. Even though she acknowledged that she tired more easily and was “not as strong as I used to be,” she seemed energized by the progress that had been made across Mississippi and the South, for which she was an important catalyst, and she was hopeful about the future.
“Now there’s always gonna be some hellcats that even the devil ain’t gonna want,” she said, “but we in the South can still bring this nation out to human decency and humane respect.”
The headline on the story I did from the interview read, “The glitter is gone, but the fight goes on.” It reflected what at the time was a fading of the 1960s civil rights movement out of the international media spotlight and a redirection to less publicized but still vital local action, epitomized by her focus on the economic and social plight of her neighbors in Ruleville and the surrounding area.
As amazed as she was at some of the changes in the South that “I didn’t believe I’d live to see,” she nevertheless emphasized that they were “not enough yet.” Nearly half a century later, she would no doubt echo those sentiments.
The interview turned out to be the last she ever gave. She died five months later.
When I heard of her death, I thought back to that day we met and it was clear that she had made every day of her life count. She never stopped working for justice and opportunity for all people in her unique and courageous way.”
Lloyd Gray was a Mississippi newspaper reporter and editor for nearly 40 years before becoming executive director of the Phil Hardin Foundation, a Mississippi education philanthropy, in 2015.
Flonzie Brown-Wright
A native of rural Farmhaven, Mississippi, Flonzie Brown-Wright grew up in Canton and attended both public and private schools in Farmhaven and Canton. She graduated from the Institute of Politics at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS and served the college as Vice-President of the Institute where she taught, "Grass-roots Organizing and Campaign Management."
She was inspired to become involved in the civil rights movement in 1963, just after the assassination of Medgar Evers. She first met Fannie Lou Hamer at a MACE (Mississippi Action for Community Education) meeting.
Her inspiration continues in a myriad of creative community initiatives across the country where she lectures and provides motivational opportunities to a cross section of audiences. Her employment and professional career has spread from the dusty roads of Mississippi to the White House as she interacted with many individuals of national prominence. She continues to be a much sought after speaker.
“My Reflection of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer”
By Flonzie Brown-Wright
“I was introduced to Mrs. Hamer by Mrs. Annie Devine in the mid 1960's. She, Mrs. Victoria Grey and Mrs. Hamer were not only colleagues, but transformed the Mississippi Democratic Party. I organized many Mass Meetings in my hometown of Canton and invited her and her singers to share Freedom songs at those meetings. I also served as Mrs. Devine's driver and would often take her to the MACE office in Greenville for planning meetings with Mrs. Hamer.”
MACE (Mississippi Action for Community Education) was founded in 1967 by Annie Devine, Fannie Lou Hamer, Unita Blackwell, Amzie Moore and Rev. J.C. Killingworth. Their mission was to train a group of local leaders who could fan out into the Delta to connect people living in isolated rural pockets with education, resources and routes to activism. They also created one of the country’s first community development corporations, and went on to practice what is now called comprehensive community development—by tackling persistent poverty and a dearth of opportunity through everything from housing and jobs to social services and small businesses.
“My most memorable personal reflection of Mrs. Hamer was evident in what I characterize as "the fire" in her eyes. She spoke with such conviction and tenacity, one could not remain the same. Her message was in her eyes. It was vividly demonstrated before the nation in 1964 in Atlantic City when she testified at the Democratic Convention.
The nation lost a real outspoken "foot-soldier" upon her passing.”
Fannie Lou Hamer and JC Killingsworth at a senate hearing on poverty in Jackson, Mississippi, April 10, 1967, as members of MACE.
Flonzie Brown-Wright at the Centennial celebration honoring Hamer's 100th birthday in October 2017 in Ruleville, MS.
Unita Blackwell and Fannie Lou Hamer at the same senate hearing on poverty in Jackson.