海角大神

Fannie Lou Hamer had been letting her light shine ever since her father put her on the table to sing the gospel song as a child, but as a Black woman in Mississippi during Jim Crow, much of the world didn鈥檛 see her value.

Kate Clifford Larson鈥檚 book 鈥淲alk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer鈥� brings her story and eventual emergence as a civil rights leader into view, providing a fresh look at the oft-repeated stories of the civil rights movement.

Fannie Lou Hamer is not Martin Luther King Jr., and perhaps that is the point. Without the pedigree and polish of King, Hamer, who picked 200 to 300 pounds of cotton a week as a teenager, also emerged as a leader. How she came to the national spotlight is equally as compelling as the power of her voice.

Most of the country viewed Mississippi in the early 1960s as an undesirable place mired in a racial morass. The state had 50 lynchings of African Americans just decades earlier. The late Bob Moses looked at the state鈥檚 poor, Black farmers and saw potential.

鈥淭he leadership is there,鈥� Moses told an audience. 鈥淚f you go out and work with your people, then the leadership will emerge.... We don鈥檛 know who they are now: we don鈥檛 need to know. But the leadership will 别尘别谤驳别.鈥澛�

The title of Larson鈥檚 biography is apt, 鈥淲alk With Me.鈥� The Harvard-educated Moses did just that after leaving his job as a math teacher in New York in his 20s to work in the South registering voters. It was the locals like Hamer who had to walk the walk.

After attempting to register to vote in 1962, Hamer lost her job and home. She left town, only to return after realizing that聽organizers like Moses represented the beginning of a 鈥淣ew Kingdom right here on earth.鈥� The young people, according to Hamer, gave 鈥渢he hope that we prayed for so many years.鈥澛�

In the summer of 1961, few civil rights workers went into Mississippi where Moses went, but by tapping into wells of wisdom like Hamer and聽Amzie Moore, who knew local concerns, Moses helped bring the nation鈥檚 focus to the struggle in Mississippi.聽聽

鈥淔reedom Summer,鈥� the organizing effort of Moses, Hamer, and others, brought hundreds of college students to Mississippi from across the country to register voters in 1964. The resulting integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party went to that summer鈥檚 Democratic National Convention with the hopes of being recognized as the state鈥檚 legitimate Democratic Party.

Hamer testified on behalf of the newly formed party at the convention in front of a live national television audience. In three years, the former schoolteacher Moses and the former sharecropper Hamer went from the fields of Mississippi to the cusp of national politics and power.

With Southern officials threatening to pull their support for President Lyndon Johnson鈥檚 nomination if the integrated party was seated, the president held an impromptu press conference to interrupt Hamer during her testimony. Afterward, however, the networks aired her speech, in which she described shootings, imprisonment, and beatings.

鈥淎ll of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens,鈥� Hamer concluded. 鈥淚f the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. 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?鈥�

The nation was stunned. 鈥淢artin Luther King or the SNCC field secretaries, they couldn鈥檛 do what Fannie Lou Hamer did,鈥� Moses said in a later. 鈥淭hey couldn鈥檛 be a sharecropper and express what it meant, and that鈥檚 what Fannie Lou Hamer did.鈥�

Larsen provides insights into Hamer鈥檚 life, but also into the White House politicking that occurred before the party was offered two seats at the convention instead of the full 68.

The compromise was rejected. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 come all this way for no two seats,鈥� Hamer told a reporter. The biography tells her story, underscores her stand for principle, and clarifies what 鈥渁ll this way鈥� for her really meant. In doing so, the book also illuminates Moses and his vision of leadership, which involved cultivating that quality in others.聽聽

While the party, including Hamer, was seated at the convention four years later, her question, 鈥淚s this America?鈥� stands out decades later. Larson鈥檚 biography provides needed context for understanding that moment. The book鈥檚 emergence now also shows that sometimes it takes time for the value of something to come to light.