Fannie Lou Hamer
1917-1977 20th century
Prayer that rises and sets out walking: believing that God acts through those who refuse to resign themselves.
Who was Fannie Lou Hamer?
The twentieth child of a Mississippi sharecropping family, she worked the cotton fields from childhood and learned at forty-four that she had the right to vote. Beaten, sterilized without her consent, driven off the plantation, she became a leading voice of the civil rights movement, carried by the hymns she raised in a voice that could quiet a room. In her, faith and action were one.
In their own words
You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.
Nobody's free until everybody's free.
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.