Every red stripe in that flag represents the black man's blood that has been shed. - Fannie Lou Hamer

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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. - Fannie Lou Hamer

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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. - Fannie Lou Hamer

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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

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

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The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

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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. - Fannie Lou Hamer

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If I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off. - Fannie Lou Hamer

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An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time.

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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

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