[singing] We shall not...We shall not be moved We shall not...We shall not be moved Just like a tree...that's planted by the water We shall not be moved.

Hello.

How you doin'?

You're not from around here, are you?

Well, if you're here for a service, you just missed it, and there won't be another service today.

Oh, touring?

Touring what, exactly, may I ask?

Battlegrounds?

Now I think that somewhere between Tupelo and Memphis, you missed a turn!

Anyway, nice to meet you, I'm Fanny Lou Hamer.

Excuse me?

Well, I guess that depends on who you ask; but, yes, some would say that I'm the one causing a ruckus down here in the Delta.

But don't let them leave out I'm fighting for the poorest of the poor to become first class citizens.

There's a battle for you.

Our battleground is all of Mississippi!

But you know, that battle ain't won yet; oh, I know we've seen a few changes over the last 20 years, but here it is, 1976, and I'm getting tired of fighting.

And things just aren't moving as fast as I thought they would.

Oh, we've seen a few changes, we can drink from more water fountains, and use libraries, and sit next to white people on the bus, and if they don't like it, they can move; but Negroes from Mississippi are the still the poorest citizens of the poorest state in the nation, about a third of us are living below the poverty level, and we're still fighting for equal access to education and services that others take for granted.

Well there ya go, you done got me started -- but, we still have no representation in Washington, and federal dollars is still going to subsidize the big plantation owners, and not getting to the people who need it most.

And my friends from SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they just seem to be arguing with each other over what to do next.

They're the ones who got me involved in the movement in the first place, almost 14 years ago, 1962.

At a meeting right here in this chapel.

Maybe that's why I stopped here today.

Trying to figure out if it was all worth it, the weeks away from home, the marches, the meetings, the beatings, the threats to me and my family.

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes when I'm by myself, or just with God, I wonder.

Like now.

I'm supposed to speak to some folks over at the high school tomorrow, sing a few songs, and offer one of my "inspiring" speeches.

That's the word they used, they want me to "inspire" a bunch of people who have been told we were almost there too many times, and have more reason to be angry and sad.

And, to tell the truth, I'm out of practice at speechifying: I barely talk to anyone besides my husband Pap anymore, And I'm not feeling to "inspired" myself.

So I decided to take a walk, hoping that would shake me out of my funk.

Doc said I should anyway, to get the circulation going in my leg, but, my feet started hurting.

Doc forgot to tell me bout that.

And my leg started acting up, so I, I stopped in here for a rest.

Yes Lord, this is where it all began.

One Sunday in the Summer of '62, Reverend Story said there was going to be a "meeting" here the next night.

Well, my old friend Mary Tucker said she was gonna go, and asked me to come along.

So the next night, Reverend James Bevel preached a sermon on "Discerning the signs of the Times," saying the time was right for negroes in Mississippi to vote.

Then James Foreman, from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee told us that it was our right as American citizens to vote.

Now, I didn't think of myself as an American citizen.

Never thought I lived in "the land of the free and the home of the brave"; what with all the lynchings in Mississippi, it felt more like "the land of the tree and the home of the grave."

I knew I was a wife and a mother, and worked on Mr.

Marlowe's plantation; but an American citizen, now that was something to think about.

And voting?

That seemed, to me, like "the most remarkable thing that could happen in the state of Mississippi" So when they had an altar call for people to go down to the courthouse, to try and register that Friday, I volunteered.

Of course, when I got home, I asked my husband, Pap about it, and he said "Baby, if it's what you want to do, go right ahead."

Yeah, I guess that is why I stopped here today.

I like this church because of what it has meant to me and the people of Ruleville.

We had a lot of meetings right here in Williams Chapel.

Lots of meetings here.

Just like all the little Black churches and chapels across Mississippi.

People ready for change.

People getting together to help each other, not just for the 11 o'clock church service, where hypocrites go to church and see a man drunk, turn up your nose and say "Now what's wrong with him?'

When you never have questioned "Why is that man drunk?"

Because something drove him to it.

Hypocrites from all walks of life converge on our churches for the sake of paying the chicken eating, Cadillac driving preacher's way to hell.

If Jesus were here right now, he'd be called a militant because he was where it was at, right down with the grass roots.

Listen, "You can pray until you faint; but if you don't get up and do something, God is not going to put it in your lap."

So it was good to see people at Black churches and chapels like this one all across the state getting together to do something.

Now y'all, don't get me wrong.

There are some good preachers.

My daddy was a preacher.

Can you tell?

Oh yeah, I joined the Stranger Home Baptist Church when I was twelve years old.

I was baptized right over yonder in the Quiver River.

I left school when I was 12; but I kept on learning to read through studying the bible at my church.

I loved reading the bible, and I still do.

The other thing I loved at church was singing.

Oh yeah, we would sing!

[Singing] Walk with Me Lord, walk with me.

Walk with Me Lord, walk with me.

While I'm on this tedious journey I want Jesus to walk with Me.

Singing has always been important to me, since I was a child picking cotton out in the cotton field with my brothers and sisters, "we would be racin', pickin' cotton to see who could pick the most" and my mother would sing.

[Singing] Jump down Turn around Pick a bale of cotton Jump down Turn around Pick a bale a day.

Oh Lord, I'll pick a bale of cotton Oh Lord, I'll pick a bale a day Jump down Turn around I'll pick a bale of cotton.

Jump down Turn around I'll pick a bale a day.

But don't let my mama's little song fool you; picking cotton was hard work; but singing helped make the hard work of picking cotton from sun-up to sundown, from "Can see to can't see" seem a little less hard.

But it was hard work.

In the spring we'd plant the cotton.

Then in June and July we'd "chop" the rows of cotton with a hoe, leaving enough space between plants for them to grow.

Then, from August until November, we'd be out in the field, picking cotton, and dragging sacks of cotton behind us down each row.

Of course, a lot of that's gone now, machines have sent a lot of people up north looking for work, and left a lot of the ones who stayed out of a job.

But picking cotton is what we had to do to put food on the table; we were "halvers," sharecroppers.

Because slavery was abolished in 1865, plantation owners found a new way to take advantage of black workers.

They hired black people negroes to work as field hands, planting, chopping and picking the cotton, and the sharecroppers got a place to live, and were supposed to get the profits from the cotton we raised.

I say "supposed to get" because the landowners subtracted the cost of supplies, or what they called "plantation expenses" from the workers' share, and the workers had to borrow against their next year's pay just to get by.

"Life was worse than hard, it was horrible!

We never did have enough to eat, and I don't remember how old I was when I got my first pair of shoes, but I was a big girl.

Mama tried to keep our feet warm by wrapping them in rags.

When I was a very small child, we'd be out in the field pickin' cotton, and you it know it looked like they'd be looking for something better, and people would express theyselves, by singing.

[singing] I'm gonna land on the shore I'm gonna land on the shore I'm gonna land on the shore, where I'll rest forever more.

I would not be a sinner I'll tell you the reason why one day my God might call me and I wouldn't be ready to die I'm gonna land on the shore I'm gonna land on the shore I'm gonna land on the shore where I'll rest forever more.

Now, sometimes my mother would say [singing] I would not be a white man white as the dripping of snow he ain't got God in his heart to hell he sho' must go I'm gonna land on the shore I'm gonna land on the shore I'm gonna land on the shore where I'll rest forever more.

Sometimes we'd have to be in the field at ,uh, 4:30 or 5:00 o'clock.

And after we had picked cotton all day long, it looked like lonesome in the field.

And then you would hear my mother start singin' [singing] Oh Lord, you know just how I feel Oh Lord, you know just how I feel.

Oh Lord, you know just how I feel.

You know just how I feel.

Of course machines can do it all now.

In the 1950's there were 65,000 sharecroppers in the Delta, and now there's only a few thousand.

Even that back-breaking work.

One of the few jobs that blacks could get, is gone, and that's one of the reasons why Mississippi Negroes remain the poorest of the poor.

I told you my daddy was a preacher.

Did I mention he was a bootlegger too?

Are you judging my daddy?

Well, we had to make ends meet.

Sometimes in the winter months my mother would offer to kill hogs for white folks, so that she could bring home and cook up the parts they didn't want.

She would help the white people kill hogs, and they would give her what people call "soul food" today.

The chittlins, the head and the feet.

Well I hated chittlins.

So, when the time came for me to help kill hogs, I would have that five-gallon bucket full of pork chops and put chittlins in the trough.

So, I could do my own thing, my own little way.

When I was a child, and we were working so hard, I noticed that "the people that wasn't working, that was the white folks, they had clothes and everything.

When I was a child, I used to wish I was white, because they had so much and there was 20 of us and we had so little.

I thought it was our color that made something wrong.

I remember asking my mother one day I said, "Mama, how come we not white?

Because white people have clothes, they can have food to eat, and we work all the time, and we don't have anything.

She said, don't you say that, because you're black.

She said, You respect yourself as a child, a little black child.

And as you grow older, respect yourself as a black woman.

Then one day, other people will respect you.

Yes, it was important to my mother that I learn to be proud of being black.

My mother was teaching black pride years before the "Black Pride Movement."

Maybe it's because her mother was a slave and was mistreated by her masters.

She knew that being a black woman is hard.

Now in those days, if you were black in the Mississippi Delta, you were poor.

Still pretty true today.

We were all poor.

But we tried to find ways to work around it.

I remember one of my favorite teacher, Thornton Lane, he was a joker.

When the heels wore down on his shoes, he would switch which feet they were on, to let the heels straighten out, he said.

I loved school, and I loved reading, and I was the best speller in my class.

It's because I was so good at reading and math that my job, after I got married and started working on W.D.

Marlow's plantation, it was to write down and weigh how much cotton the workers brought in.

Until one day everything changed.

"It was the 31st of August, 1962, that eighteen of us traveled 26 miles to the county courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to try and register to vote.

How many of y'all are registered to vote?

Well I'm glad, but it should be more.

I don't care if you vote for Jimmy Carter or Mr.

Ford.

The truth is, I do care.

But the important thing is that you exercise your rights as citizens to vote.

And that's what we wanted to do.

Now we went in an old bus that a negro man used in the summer to haul cotton field, and in the winter to take people to Florida to work in the fields there.

Now when we got to Indianola, we was met by a state highway patrolman and city policemen.

-- in Mississippi, any white man that is able to wear a pair of khaki pants without them falling off him and holding two guns can make a good law officer--so we was met by them there.

The registrar was inside the courthouse, and we all had to take what he called a "literacy test".

Now this "literacy test" consisted of 21 questions.

It began with "what is your full name?"

Then it went on to questions such as: "By whom are you employed"?

This meant that you would be fired by the time you got back home.

"Where is your place of residence in this district?"

This meant that the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizen's Council would be given your address.

After answering this kind of question, the clerk pointed out a section of the Mississippi Constitution, told us to copy it and then give a reasonable interpretation of it.

And that was the first time, in August 1962, that I knew that Mississippi had a constitution!"

Anyway, I was given the 16th section of the Constitution to read and interpret.

It was dealing with factor laws and I knowed as much about a factor law as a horse knows about Christmas Day.

Anyway, guess what happened.

I failed the test.

Of course, we found out later that being white could exempt one from having to pass the test or even take it.

After we finished this form, we started on the trip back to Ruleville, and we was stopped by the same city policeman that I had seen in Indianola, and we was told to go back.

When we got back to Indianola the bus driver was charged with driving a bus the wrong color.

It was too yellow.

Now that's very true.

Now this same bus had been used year after year to haul people to the cotton fields to pick cotton and to chop cotton.

But on this day, the first day it had been used for voter registration it had the wrong color.

Well when they took the driver off the bus, the people on the bus got scared, so I started singing to find a little courage.

[singing] We shall not, we shall not be moved We shall not, we shall not be moved just like a tree, that's planted by the water We shall not, we shall not be moved.

Then of course,everybody joined in, like we do.

Here we go.

On the road to freedom.

[singing] On the road to freedom We shall not be moved On the road to freedom We shall not be moved Just like a tree, that's planted by the water We shall not be moved.

They first charged bus driver one hundred dollars.

And from a hundred dollars they cut down to fifty.

And from fifty to thirty.

When they got to thirty dollars, we finally had enough among ourselves to pay his fine.

When I got back to the plantation, Mr.

Marlow, the plantation owner, said "Fannie Lou, you have been to the courthouse to try and register," and he said, "we are not ready for this in Mississippi."

I told him "I didn't go down to register for you.

I went down to register for myself."

He says "Well, you will have to withdraw.

Well I am looking for your answer, yea or nay."

I just looked.

He said, "I will give you until tomorrow morning and if you don't withdraw, you will have to leave."

I had worked there eighteen years.

I had baked cakes and sent them overseas to him during the war.

I'd nursed his family, cleaned his house, stayed with his kids.

I had handled his payroll and his time book.

And yet he wanted me out.

And then he says "Even if you do withdraw, you might still have to leave.

It's only how I feel."

So I left that same night.

I made up my mind I was grown, and I was tired.

Now I know this may not be the battle that you came to hear about tonight.

But I haven't had many people to talk to lately.

But I like people, and I like to talk.

I still don't know what I'm gonna talk about tomorrow night!

But that August is when it all began.

Now I'm beginning to understand what my mother meant when she said, "respect yourself as a black woman.

And one day, other people will respect you."

And that meant a lot to me, because my momma had died the year before, in '61.

I left the plantation that night and went and stayed with a friend in Ruleville, then later on I moved with my 2 daughters, in with my niece in Tallahatchie County.

But soon I decided to come back to Ruleville.

You see, I said "I'm not a criminal.

I hadn't done one thing to nobody, and I got a right to live in Ruleville."

I always come back to Ruleville, see, this is my home.

And I started thinking, what if "We the People...." stretched enough to include little ol' me.

So that December I went back to the registar in Indianola, and told the registrar "Now, you can't have me fired because I'm not livin' in no white man's house.

I'll be here every thirty days until I become a registered voter."

And I found out in January that I passed!

I was one of the first black women in Sunflower County to be registered.

In the meantime, a bunch of people from the SNCC decided I was a good worker for voting rights, and made me a SNCC field secretary.

That's how I met some great mean like Charlie McLaurin, James Forman, Dave Dennis, John Lewis, and Robert Moses, the director of SNCC's Mississippi Project.

And they had me tell my storier at rallies.

Bob Moses.

During slavery, plantation owners used to count on preachers to convince slaves that their reward was in heaven.

Well, when they heard about redemption, the slaves got impatient for it, and started applying bible lessons to their own lives.

For example, they took Exodus 8:1, when the Lord told Moses to go unto the Pharaoh in Egypt, where the Israelites were held captive and demand that he "Let my people go," as also applying to their situation.

The slaves were captives, the slave owners were the captors, and the slave-holding states were Egypt.

And the story was turned into a "code song" for escaping slaves.

[singing] When Isreal was in Egypt land Let my people go Oppressed so hard they could not stand Let my people go Go down Moses way down in Egypt land Tell ole Pharoh Let my people go.

Well, we prayed for change in the state of Mississippi for years, and God made it so plain.

He sent Moses down in Egypt-land to tell Pharaoh to let his people go.

And He made it so plain here in Mississippi.

The man that headed the project was named Moses.

And he sent Bob Moses down in Mississippi, to tell all of these hate groups to let His people go.

[singing] tell Old Pharaoh, to let my people go.

Now most of the black people in the Delta didn't want anything to do with these workers at first.

Most thought they were going to come around, stir up trouble, get the white people riled up, and then move on.

And most of the sharecroppers were afraid of being ashamed at the courthouse when they couldn't read the constitution.

Bob Moses said our job was to tell people "first that they were poor; second, why they were poor; and third, what were some of the things they had to do in order to alleviate their poverty."

Like go to the courthouse and register to vote.

So I started talking with people about their rights, as citizens, to vote.

Because there were a lot of Black people in Mississippi, and if we could vote, we would make a difference.

Now sometimes I traveled with the Freedom Singers, a gospel group from Georgia.

One of my favorites was [singing] Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn me around, turn me around, turn me around Ain't gonna let nobody, turn me around I'm gonna keep on walking keep on talking marching up to freedom land.

The next year, I went with some other SNCC workers to a voter registration workshop in Charleston, SC.

Before the Civil War, Charleston was the center of the slave trade.

40% of the slaves brought from Africa were sold in Charleston.

It was a powerful experience to see the tree stump, where slaves were sold, and families were separated.

They keeps it nice and shellacked.

My grandmother, Liza Bramlet, was a slave.

Looking at that stump, where our ancestors were sold like cattle I began to understand the relationship between then and now.

I began to understand why I was doing the work I was starting to do.

It was on the way back from Charleston, it was a Sunday morning -- when we was changing buses in Columbus, MS.

The bus driver put a little white girl in front of us, saying that "niggers could not be in front of the line."

Well, I asked the bus driver for his badge, and told him that that I was gonna report him and get him in trouble.

Then we noticed he made a phone call from a payphone at every scheduled stop.

Eventually we found out why.

When we got to Winona, MS four of our people went into the the restaurant and were chased out by the police.

Six of us were arrested and taken to jail.

After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams.

I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams.

And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'Yes, sir,' nigger?

Can you say 'yes, sir'?"

And I heard Miss Annell Ponder say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"

“So well, say it."

She said, "I don't know you well enough."

I would hear her body when it hit the floor.

And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell.

One of these men, a State Highway Patrolman, said, "We're going to make you wish you was dead."

I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners.

The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first prisoner to take the blackjack It was a piece of black leather thing.

It was wide, and it was heavy, and he says, "I want you to make that bitch wish she was dead".

And the first prisoner began to beat me until he was exhausted.

Then the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second prisoner to take the blackjack.

I began to scream and one of the white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.

One white man -- my dress had worked up high.

I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.

I passed out after a couple beatings, and the highway patrolman roused me and told me to "Get up, Fatso."

When they got through beating me, I didn't feel like flesh anymore.

When I was a child, I used to wish I was white, but now I'm proud to be a black Negro because we don't beat on people the way they do.

And I told the policeman, I said, "It's going to be miserable when you have to face God.

Cause one day you going to pay up for the things you have done."

Because, as the Scripture says, "Has made of one blood all nations."

He said, "It's a damn lie," he said.

"Abraham Lincoln said that."

Now that's pitiful.

I'm telling you the truth, but it's pitiful, you see that people can have so much hate that will make them beat another person and don't know they doing wrong.

We were in jail for three more days.

And we tried to lift each others' spirits, singing our songs.

When you're locked up in a brick cell, and you hadn't done one thing wrong to nobody, but still you're locked up there and sometimes the words just begin to come to you and you begin to sing" [singing] When Paul and Silas were bound in jail all night long Paul and Silas were bound in jail all night long Paul and Silas were bound in jail all night long singing who shall deliver poor me St.

Paul and Silas were thrown in jail by the Romans for disturbing the peace.

And I thought about Paul's letter to the Ephesians, the sixth chapter eleventh and twelfth verse said: "put on the whole armor of God that He may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against power.

Against principalities.

Against the rulers of darkness of this world.

Against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Finally some SNCC staffers figured out where we were and came to get us out.

We learned about two things that happened the night before, while we were in jail.

President Kennedy said the night before on television that the Negro community "has a right to expect that the law will be fair, and that "the constitution will be colorblind," and he was going to ask congress to pass a civil rights bill but any thought of progress was overshadowed by the news that hours after Kennedy's speech, Medgar Evers, a champion for the civil rights in Mississippi, was gunned down in his driveway.

He had survived fighting for his country at Omaha Beach during World War II; but was gunned down by the enemy in his own Jackson, Mississippi driveway.

[singing] Oh..... Lord... You know just how I feel.

Oh Lord..... Death done been here and gone.

He carried my brother away.

Oh Lord.... He carried my brother away.

The man who probably killed him went to trial for the crime, twice, the next year.

But both trials, in front of an all-white jury, ended up without a verdict, with what they call a "hung jury."

No surprise.

White folks in Mississippi have always been real good at hangin'.

Between you and me, and don't tell nobody I said this, sometimes it seems to me we just can't win.

And sometimes I'm not so sure I can "keep on marchin' up to freedom land.".

[Singing] They say that freedom is a constant struggle.

They say that freedom is a constant struggle.

They say that freedom is a constant struggle.

Oh Lord, we've been struggling so long We must be free, we must be free.

(sniffles) Scuse me.

(sniffles) I got to take a blood pressure pill.

(sniffles) It's from dranking too many sodas and eating hot dogs, travelling between meetings and rallies.

Baby, freedom is a constant struggle.

and we cared enough to fight to make that paper which was writte a long time ago, the U.S.

Constitution, a reality.

So a couple months after Winona, we set up a "freedom vote," with ballot boxes in black churches and beauty parlors throughout the state, to show what would happen if negroes could vote.

About 80,000 people, mostly black, and mostly not registered, participated in the mock election for freedom and opportunity.

Now that many votes in a real election would have replaced the governor and lieutenant governor of Mississippi.

That probably scared some white folks.

Now one of the ways we got so many people to cast "freedom votes" was by recruiting white student volunteers from Stamford and Yale university to canvas for votes.

And they were a big help.

And, as long as there were white students here, the FBI and the federal government was watching.

So some of the SNCC leadership thought it would be a good idea to recruit northern white students in for a massive voter registration drive the next summer.

But a lot of SNCC members thought the whites would leave trouble when they went back north.

Others worried about the image of white field workers brought in to help the negroes.

But I said "If we're trying to break down this barrier of segregation, we can't segregate ourselves" and Bob Moses said: "I'm not going to be a part of an organization that says, No white people are going to be head of a project because they're white.

If you want to run that kind of an organization, a racist organization, then count me out."

And the decision was made to invite 1,000 white students down, because that would attract reporters, and help protect the black workers who otherwise might be beaten or killed.

In the meantime, people who had already tried to register came to my house, and distributed food and clothes to people who promised to go to the courthouse and try to register to vote.

One time the mayor, he went on the radio telling everybody to come to my house to get food and clothes.

He was trying to create a mob scene.

But 400 people went to the courthouse to try and register that day!

The mayor also had the State Sovereignty Commission, charged with "protecting state sovereignty," from the Civil Rights movement, communists, the federal government, and other enemies of Mississippi, investigate me.

Maybe they thought I was a communist, giving people clothes.

Around that time, I ran for public office for the first time.

You see, I figured that once we voted the racists out of office, we could replace them with people who cared about poor people in the Delta and the rest of the state, who wanted a state where all human beings have a chance.

So in the Democratic Primary in 1964, I ran for election to the House of Representatives.

I had my own campaign song, it was a version of a song that was sung during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus.

Here's how it went then: [singing ]if you miss me on the back of the bus and you can't find me nowhere.

Come on over to the front of the bus, I'll be ridin' right there.

and it was adapted by the civil rights movement.

[singing] If you miss me on the picket lines, and you can't find me nowhere.

Come on over to the county jail, I'll be roomin' over there.

And here's how it went for my campaign: [singing] If you miss me in the missus kitchen and you can't find me nowhere.

Come on over to Washington, I'll be congresswoman there.

[laughing] But during the campaign the harassment got worse.

People getting tickets just for driving to my house.

And right after I declared I was running for Congress, my husband, Pap got fired from his job.

One day a telephone operator called me up.

She said, "Fannie Lou, you're having a lot of different callers on your telephone".

Now I'd been on the phone with organizers from all around the country --then she said "I want to know do you have any outsiders in your house?

"You got a mighty big phone bill".

I knew she wasn't concerned about my household budget, so I told her I paid my phone bill, so you should mind your own business.

Now that campaign was my first experience as a political candidate.

I didn't expect to win.

How could I considering who controlled voter registration?

We did learn that we could run for office and maybe someday change Mississippi.

But not when less than 10% of Mississippi blacks were registered to vote.

You see why it's discouraging.

No matter what they do and say in Washington, here in Mississippi, the smallest change seems always just out of reach.

And sometimes you just get tired of reaching.

So we thought we had to take a big risk in the upcoming summer, Freedom Summer.

One thousand young people, mostly white, from all over the country were invited to Mississippi to help register voters, set up freedom schools and community centers to teach our children.

Now those volunteers that came summer showed a lot of courage, because the nation was reading about the violent racism in Mississippi.

The story went around that one young man, trying to determine whether he should risk his well being by travelling to Mississippi.

Trying to find an answer, he prayed and prayed.

Finally, Jesus appeared to him and said: "If you go, I'll travel with you as far as Memphis; after that, you're on your own!"

I went up to Oxford, Ohio, where the volunteers were learning how to register people, how to avoid arrest, and what to expect if arrested.

I worked with the students in workshops.

I told them about Mississippi.

Told them that no matter what they believed, they needed to respect our religion, cause it's what keeps us going, and they were an answer to our prayers.

And I told them not to hate the white people.

We're not fighting against these people because we hate them.

We're fighting against these people because we love them and we're the only thing can save them now.

We are fighting to save these people from their hate.

We want them to see the right way.

I told them "The white man is the scaredest person on earth.

Out in daylight he don't do nothin'.

But at night hel'll toss a bomb or pay someone to kill.

The white man's afraid that he'll be treated like he's treating the Negroes, but I couldn't carry that much hate.

It wouldn't solve any problems for me to hate whites because they hate me."

Besides, "I wouldn't drag my morals and my dignity low enough to do all the things to them that they've done to us."

And I'll tell you, I'd never seen so many white people in a room in my life.

And I never would again.

Well no, that's not quite true.

There were just as many or more when I was invited to sing at the Newport Folk Festival the next year, that was an experience hanging around with Howlin' Wolf, and Peter Paul and Mary Of course I knew Pete Seeger from when he came through Mississippi, and the Staple Singers were my cousins.

But it was something like I had never seen before.

Now, when white people get together with music, it's a lot different than how it had been taught to me.

One of the things we did in Oxford was teach those kids how to sing Mississippi-style!

For example.

[singing] I woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on freedom.

Well, I woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on freedom.

I woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on freedom.

Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah.

Now, it's while we were working with the volunteers in Oxford that we heard those three boys, Mickey Schwerner, Michael James Chaney, and Andy Goodman were missing.

The SNCC staff knew what that probably meant, and knew there probably wouldn't be a happy ending.

We were far too used to it.

James Foreman called it "the first interracial lynching in Mississippi."

But because two of these boys gone missing were white, that made the rest of the country pay attention.

You know, I made some good frien during Freedom Summer; but they all went back North.

And Whoo!

I certainly do miss th I try to stay in touch with some I stay with Tracy Sugarman and his family when I travel to Connecticut.

not so sure I'm gonna make it back to Connecticut; but I try to stay in touch.

During Freedom Summer SNCC was sending me around the state, and across the country to raise funds.

They'd get the request, "We need us some Fanny Lou up here.

Can we get some Fanny Lou over here next week?"

I was telling my story and the story of what's been going on in Mississippi.

And they found out that my Winona experience was worth a lot in donation dollars.

But, that's how things in Ruleville got even worse.

People were hopping mad that we brought in the voter-registration workers.

I got a phone call one evening in August, with someone saying "We know where you are, Fannie Lou, so don't try to get away.

You're going to end up in the Mississippi River."

You see they were burnin' up that because Pap and I set up our house as headquarters for the volunteers.

One day the mayor asked Pap what it feel like having white men in his house.

And Pap told him, "I feel like a man, because they treat me like a man."

By summer's end we had opened 41 Freedom Schools and 13 Community Centers.

But we didn't do as well getting people to register to vote, and most who tried didn't pass the test.

And of course they found those three boys.

And everybody paid attention.

And we could no longer ignore the fact, America is not the land of the free and the home of the brave when because people want to register and vote, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman is dead today.

But like James Cheney's mother said, we can't rest until "the killing of black mothers' sons is as important as the killing of white mothers' sons."

That summer we formed the MS Freedom Democratic Party.

See we knew that the Democratic Party in Washington was progressive, but the Democratic Party in Mississippi supported segregation laws, keeping blacks out of white organizations.

And those organizations included the Democratic Party.

They wouldn't let us into the precinct and county conventions; so we held our own.

And at our own state convention--in Jackson, Mississippi--we selected 68 delegates to go to the national convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and challenge the all-white delegation as not representin' the people of Mississippi.

Aaron Henry from Clarksdale was the chair, I was elected vice-chair.

We started the 1200-mile hike to Atlantic City, called "America's Playground."

But we weren't playin'.

We were bringin' the real Mississippi to town.

We talked to all the delegates we could, and staged sit-ins, singing "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and our freedom songs on the boardwalk.

[singing] Go tell it on the mountain To let my people go.

I testified before the Credentials Committee.

I told them about the beating in Winona and what we went through trying to become first-class citizens.

And I asked them "Is this America?

The land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"

And Dr.

King testified to the credentials committee that we couldn't preach democracy in other countries if we didn't practice it in Mississippi.

When we got back to the Gem Motel on Pacific Avenue, we learned that President Johnson had, at the last minute, called a televised press conference so America wouldn't hear my testimony.

But after Johnson's speech, I was big news on the networks, and America had the chance to hear me.

Phone calls and telegrams started pouring into the convention headquarters and White House in support of the Mississippi delegation.

But President Johnson, who was up for reelection, had already signed the Civil Rights Act into law, and was afraid of losing votes in the backlash.

So, he put his running mate, Hubert Humphrey in charge of convincing us to back down, threatening his place on the ticket if he failed.

So I asked Mr.

Humphrey, "do you mean to Tell me that your position is more important to you than four hundred thousand black people's lives?"

In order to head off a debate on the convention floor, Johnson arranged a meeting between national democratic leaders, the NAACP, SCLC, Martin Luther King, Bob Moses, and a couple other members of the Freedom Democratic Party.

Suddenly I wasn't invited to the meetings!

I think it had something to do with my response to Mr.

Humphrey.

Anyway... Finally, we were offered a "compromise" of two seats.

Dr.

King and others spoke in favor of the compromise.

"SNCC was the only one that didn't tell us what to do.

I went to Bob.

I said, " Bob do you think we ought to take the compromise.

He said, "You grown, you make up your own decision."

The so-called "leaders" of the Democratic Party and the "national movement" leaders, they all stated their case; but it was the women, Annie Devine, Victoria Gray and I that told the Mississippi delegation, we weren't going to be led by nobody who "ain't been in Mississippi two weeks and don't know nothing about the problem."

And, after we spoke, the Mississippi delegation voted to turn down the compromise.

Aaron Henry, chair of the Freedom Democratic Party, threatened to announce that we had accepted the compromise anyway, and I told him, if you do, you better be prepared to stay in that convention hall the balance of your life, cause if you come outside I'm going to cut your throat.

I said that.

I was angry.

Some reporters wanted to know why we refused the "compromise," And I told them, I said "We didn't come all this way for no two seats, when all of us is tired!"

I left Atlantic City angry, disappointed, and sick and tired of things not getting done.

you know they tell us these things takes time.

But for three hundred years we had given them time.

So we went home.

But that was the beginning of the end of the movement as we knew it.

And some of those scars never did heal.

I got a phone call in Atlantic City, telling me to go back to Africa.

Cute, wasn't it?

Go back to Africa.

I said "OK, baby,' .

I said, "Let's make a deal:' I say, after you've sent all the Jewish people back to Jerusalem, the Koreans back to Korea, the Australians back to Australia, you give the Indians back their land, and you get on the Mayflower from whence you come.

then there wouldn't be too many of us at home.

Now would there?

I'm not going anyplace; I'm going to fight for my rights in the state of Mississippi" This is where I live, in the state of Mississippi, the city of Ruleville, in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta, "the most rural and the poorest area in the USA.".

Moved here when I was two years old.

One day, the mayor told me, 'Fan if you dont like what's going o in Mississippi, you ought to leave.

I said 'Okay, mayor, if you sick of looking at me in Ruleville, you pack your ass up!"

So I never felt the need to live someplace else.

But after the disappointment of the National Democratic Conve the great singer, Harry Belafont took me and a bunch of SNCC work to the nation of Guinea, in West Africa, for a little res relaxation and cultural enlighte I didnt know whether I would be scared or what, with what little I knew or read about Africa we thought everybody in Africa was just wild We really didn't know that they were our people.

But when I saw a man come out of the cockpit who was black, I knew right away then it was go to be different than how it had taught to me.

We saw black men flying the airplanes, driving buses, sitting behind the big desks at banks just doing all the things that I used to seeing white people do.

I could feel myself never, ever being ashamed of my background or my ancestors For the first time in my life I a black stewardess walking through the plane.

And I remembered my mother telling me, "Respect yourself as a black wom Then one day, other people will respect you."

We wasn't in Guinea more than a couple of hours before President TourÈ came to see us.

I just compared my feelings.

We tried so hard so many times t the president in this country and were never given that chance But the president over there cared enough to visit us.

He invited us to his palace.

Another thing I thought about while I was over there.

some of my people ould have been left and are living there, but well never know each other all we had was taken away from u And I become kind of angry; I felt the anger of ... why this had to happen to us.

We were brought to America and our forebearers were sold; white people changed their names Here, my name is Townsend.

But what is my maiden name?

What is my name?

I felt a closeness in Africa.

I couldn't speak the language, b but some of the songs, it was the tune of some songs I used to hear my grandmother si I felt a -- I felt real close in Africa.

It got to me.

I cried over there.

Some of my people could have been left and we'll never know each other because we've been separated Listen.

I know everybody is running arou talking about 1976 as the bicentennial year of American progress.

But Black people, Indian people, and other oppressed folk aren't really interested in cele something that wiped out our her It's pretty hard to pledge alleg to something we've never had.

If there's going to be any survi for this country, we have to make democracy a real for all people and not just a fe I felt I belonged in Africa.

But no, I belong in Mississippi, I belong in Sunflower County.

When we got back, SNCC, with the rest of the movement, was splintering into factions.

In 1966 Stokley Carmichael was elected chair of SNCC and me and Stokley didn't always see eye to eye.

Anyway, it looked like the movement was moving in a new direction without me.

So I focused on helping the people around here, in Sunflower County, the Mississippi Delta, the most rural and the poorest area in the USA.

In 1967, working with the National Council of Negro Wo we bought 35 female and 5 male p and started a Pig Bank!

We'd loan out pregnant female pi to local families, who would return them after the piglets arrived and give any new female pigs to other needy families.

In six years, 900 families had participated in the program.

Yep, we kept those male pigs pretty busy!

(laughter) Now, out of the 31,000 blacks in Sunflower County, do you know how many owned land?

Seventy-one!

So I bought the first 40 acres for my Freedom Farm project, and soon we were able to buy more.

This was land cooperatively owned by local people, and anyone, regardless of race, who worked the crops could take the food home to their family.

Then we started buying and building Freedom Houses.

Wed gather people who lived in a shack which was most and tell them how to take advant of low-cost farm mortgages.

Within three years, we built 70 houses.

But a combination of bad weather... and management meant we had to close Freedom Farm.

maybe after 300 years of doing what we were told on the plantat it took a while for people to believe in themselves as land I ran for public office a few more times, didn't win.

I guess I was meant to stay down here with the "poorest of the poor."

The "grass roots movement."

But still it was disappointing.

So much that didn't get done.

And I'll tell you, I'm tired.

I probably won't run again, and I don't travel much anymore.

My health's not that good.

I've spent some time in hospitals.

I got fluid retention, diabetes, and nerve troubles.

And they discovered I got a little cancer.

And I still have trouble with my kidneys from the beating in Winonna.

And there are days where I just cannot get out of bed.

I'm tired.

Yes, I have learned a lot since James Foreman stood here and told us we could vote.

I've learned enough to be constantly hopeful and usually frustrated.

We ain't free yet, but I'm thinking my part's just about done.

No more trips to Harlem, Wisconsin, Boston, Africa.

I miss the travelling, and I miss meeting people, like you.

When it comes down to it, I guess that's why I did everything I did, to help people.

Helping the poorest of the poor become first class citizens, and help America see what's going on.

and not just black folk, the whites as well.

Because they have been conditioned into the system, too.

But talking with you makes me realize I've met some amazing people who are going to continue the work.

The young men from SNCC; the children who came down and stayed with us during Freedom Summer; the kids in the Freedom Schools and Freedom Houses.

The kids need to know their mission and they're not going to take it the way we did.

As those kids get older, and start taking over Mississippi and the rest of country, change might be slow now.

But soon We will representation in the state government, in the congress, and who knows?

Maybe, someday, The White House.

Maybe that's inspiring enough.

I guess I can write that speech now.

Well, wait a minute, I can't leave without singin' "my song."

Will you help me?

[singing] This little light of mine Well, I'm gonna let it shine.

Oh, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

This little light of mine, Well, I'm gonna let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine Let it shine.

Well, I got some work to do.

I hope you do too.

Oh, and I hope you find your battlegrounds!

(applause) (applause continues)