CHAPTER FIVE

AN EXPANSIVE VISION OF FREEDOM

I tell people I don’t want no equal rights any more. I’m fightin’ for human rights.

On July 12, 2016, Nigerian American activist Opal Tometi delivered a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. Only three years prior, Tometi had joined forces with queer activists Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors to launch Black Lives Matter (BLM), a global movement to end state-sanctioned violence. What began as a hashtag on social media following the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer evolved into a protest movement that shook the nation to its core. After the 2014 police shooting of teenager Mike Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, BLM rose to national prominence, demanding justice for Brown’s family and the thousands of unarmed Black people murdered by the police. From uprisings in cities across the nation to organized acts of resistance on college campuses, BLM transformed the American political landscape, shaping national discussions on race and policing. In the months leading up to the November 2016 presidential election in the United States, BLM forced several presidential candidates to confront the issue of state-sanctioned violence.

Although the movement began in the United States, it spread like wildfire across the globe. In only a matter of months, activists established BLM chapters in several major cities. In Toronto, for example, activists Janaya Khan and Yusra Ali cofounded a local BLM chapter in October 2014, following the police killing of Jermaine Carby in Brampton, Ontario.2 Carby, a thirty-three-year-old Black man from Toronto, was shot and killed on September 24, 2014, during a routine traffic stop while traveling through the predominantly white suburbs of Brampton. In December 2014, activists in Japan gathered to launch an Afro-Asian solidarity march called Tokyo for Ferguson (#Tokyo4Ferguson) in the wake of the grand jury’s acquittal of the police officer who gunned down Mike Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri.³ Displaying signs in both English and Japanese, these activists marched throughout the busy streets of Tokyo in solidarity with BLM activists in the United States. In the subsequent months, BLM marches and demonstrations began to sweep cities across Europe, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin.⁴ The wave of protests across the world further amplified BLM’s concerted efforts to emphasize the global nature of state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. In its early years (and in the years to follow), the founders of the movement also worked to foster transnational networks and solidarities between activists in the United States and those abroad. By 2016, the movement boasted an estimated twenty-six chapters across the world.⁵

Tometi’s speech before the United Nations was part of this vital transnational work. Yet the occasion proved a historic moment in BLM’s history—the first time one of its founders addressed the most powerful international body for human rights. Tometi’s presence at the UN General Assembly therefore marked an important shift.⁶ reflecting on the historical significance of her appearance, Tometi pointed to the “urgent need to engage the international community about the most pressing human rights crises of our day. In the footsteps of many courageous civil and human rights defenders that came before,” she continued, “I look to this meeting to be a forum for meaningful dialogue and action.”⁷

This July 2016 event came on the heels of the high-profile police killings of two Black men: Alton Sterling on July 5 and Philando Castile on July 6.⁸ The police shootings, both caught on video, sparked a wave of protests across the United States that summer. In hopes of addressing the problems of structural racism and discrimination, the UN hosted a two-day debate that brought together world leaders and activists. Only six months prior, a group of UN researchers had called on US leaders to confront state-sanctioned violence and the “crisis of racial injustice.”9 They pointed out that “[i]mpunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”¹⁰ The two-day gathering in July 2016 was one significant step in the UN’s efforts to address this crisis, and the decision to include Tometi as one of the featured presenters underscored BLM’s central role in shaping national and global narratives on human rights. Reminiscent of a long line of Black activists who took their concerns before the UN, including activist and well-known singer Paul Robeson and lawyer William Patterson, Tometi presented a powerful message before the General Assembly—one heard and circulated to millions worldwide.¹¹

She began her address with a moment of silence for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, recognizing the gravity of the moment. She went on to emphasize three specific challenges in the campaign to advance human rights for all: global capitalism, white supremacy, and the suppression of democracy.¹² For Tometi, all three grew from the “root causes of inequality” and were shaped by a history of “colonialism, indigenous genocide, and the enslavement of people of African descent as the precursor.”¹³ Highlighting the devastating impact of racial capitalism, Tometi pointed to the ways marginalized groups are exploited across the globe: “The valuation of profit over people impedes human rights across much of the world. Capitalists’ motivations consume natural resources, perpetuate violence against workers—especially women and girls—while contributing little to local economies.” Citing national and international examples—from Detroit to Haiti to across the African continent—Tometi offered an incisive critique of how capitalist ventures have “strangled indigenous industries, privatized basic services, displaced over 65 million people, and decimated environments across Asia, Africa and the Americas.”¹⁴

She went on to address the global problem of white supremacy, which created the circumstances for police killings in the United States and abroad. “These beliefs,” she argued, “are deeply embedded into social and cultural fabrics throughout society and spread through media and entertainment, education, and other systems. A result of this is the cultivation of disdain against black people, and this anti-blackness has lethal consequences.” The tragic police killings of Sterling and Castile underscored this fact as protests rocked the nation in July 2016. And as Tometi emphasized, Black people everywhere—in North America, Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world—are vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. She therefore emphasized the need to view police killings in the United States as part of an ongoing human rights crisis. Tometi then reasoned that because state-sanctioned violence against Black people is a human rights issue, the response and solution required a global effort. “As communities face a myriad of challenges and hostility from the state, driven by neoliberal interests,” Tometi argued, “they are advocating for their rights and asserting their human dignity.”15 Tometi went on to call on activists and world leaders to uphold an expansive political vision, modeled after BLM.¹⁶ “We advocate with and are led by women, black immigrants, queer folks, people who are incarcerated, transgender, disabled, and people who practice different religions,” she said. “We see this diversity and complexity as strength.”¹⁷

By linking national concerns to global ones and calling for an expansive vision of rights and freedom, Tometi was, as she pointed out, walking “in the footsteps of many courageous civil and human rights defenders” who came before her. Fannie Lou Hamer was certainly one of these individuals. As an organizer during the 1960s and ’70s, Hamer advocated an expansive vision of freedom—one that was fully inclusive of all marginalized groups in the United States and abroad. Hamer’s visit to the African continent in 1964 had radically expanded her political vision—helping her see that the struggle for Black rights and freedom in the United States was, in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, “but a local phase of a world problem.”¹⁸ As she traveled from place to place during the late 1960s and 1970s, Hamer often reminded activists to never fall into the trap of imagining that their local struggle was somehow disconnected from the struggles of other marginalized peoples. Embracing a defining feature of the Black intellectual tradition, Hamer resisted what she saw as any individual or collective effort to advance social progress for some rather than all.¹⁹ “Now we’ve got to have some changes in this country. And not only changes for the Black man, and not only changes for the Black woman, but the changes we have to have in this country are going to be for the liberation of all people,” Hamer argued in a 1971 speech before the National Women’s Political Caucus. “I am not just fighting for myself and for the Black race,” she explained. “But I am fighting for the Indians; I’m fighting for the Mexicans; I’m fighting for the Chinese; I’m fighting for anybody because as long as they are human beings, they need freedom.”20 Hamer summarized her position in five powerful words that she often repeated: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”²¹ Those words are as timely and significant today as they were when she first expressed them.

“I FELT A CLOSENESS IN AFRICA.”

Fannie Lou Hamer’s travels abroad in 1964 helped her refine this message. As a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she, along with eleven other activists, traveled to Guinea on a trip organized by entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte, an avid supporter of the organization.²² It was the first and only time Hamer left the United States. During the 1960s, SNCC played a central role in advancing voter registration in the US South. In the summer of 1964, the group organized Freedom Summer, a volunteer campaign that drew over one thousand volunteers, mostly white college students from Northern cities.²³ The volunteers left their loved ones behind to spend the summer in Mississippi. Their goal was twofold: to register local Black residents to vote and to establish Freedom Schools—free grassroots schools designed to teach civic and political literacy. Within only ten days, local white supremacists murdered three volunteers and dozens more were beaten and arrested.

While the efforts of these activists were vital to challenging voter suppression in Mississippi and across the US South, the tragic incidents surrounding Freedom Summer, combined with the disappointment of the 1964 Democratic National Convention, weighed heavily on activists in SNCC.²⁴ Following Freedom Summer, Belafonte began to raise funds for a group of them to travel to the African continent. Belafonte believed the trip would invigorate the activists who had been working tirelessly to expand voting rights in the United States. “I had become quite sensitive to the fact that many of the people of SNCC were on burnout,” he explained. “They had been on the front line for so long, doing so much, and many had been beaten and battered. What became clear to me was that they really needed a hiatus.”25 He recommended Guinea as the ideal place for SNCC activists to visit, pointing to the leadership and nation-building efforts of Guinea’s first president Sékou Touré. In 1958, one year after Ghana gained its independence, Guinea declared its independence from France, signifying another triumph in the fight to end European colonialism in Africa.²⁶ Touré would lead the postcolonial nation forward, instituting a socialist government inspired by his own interest in Marxism.

Many Black Americans traveled to the African continent during this period, in most cases to join in celebration with African leaders and draw inspiration from their accomplishments. This was certainly true of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, who joined a cadre of Black activists and artists—including labor organizer A. Philip Randolph, actress and vocalist Etta Moten Barnett, and political scientist Ralph J. Bunche—on a trip to Ghana in 1957. At the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s new prime minister, these African American activists participated in several ceremonial events in Accra.²⁷ While Ghana was certainly a popular destination for civil rights activists during the late 1950s and 1960s, others traveled to Guinea following its independence in 1958. In 1964, Malcolm X visited Guinea, where President Touré praised him for advancing the “struggle for dignity.”²⁸ In 1969, Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael and his wife, South African singer Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea, where they actively supported the Touré administration.²⁹ For many of these activists, Guinea not only represented a symbol of hope but also a pathway forward in the fight for civil and human rights.³⁰

With Belafonte’s help and support, SNCC arranged a three-week trip to Guinea in September 1964. While Belafonte led the initiative, Touré, according to activist John Lewis, had expressed interest in hosting “a group of young Americans who were involved in the civil rights movement.”³¹ The Guinean president hoped to provide an opportunity for young Guineans to meet with American civil rights leaders to exchange ideas and strengthen ties between both groups. SNCC activists were eager to take advantage of the opportunity and selected a group of twelve leaders, including John Lewis and Julian Bond, who would represent the organization on the trip. Hamer was one of four women included. SNCC activists Prathia Hall, Dona Richards, and Ruby Doris Smith Robinson joined Hamer on what would be a transformative trip for all involved.32

The group of activists left for Guinea on an Air Guinée flight on September 11, 1964. They flew from New York, stopping in Dakar, Senegal, en route to Guinea. From the outset, the experience was a life-altering one for Hamer. She was especially excited to travel outside the United States:

You know, I had never been out of the state in my life, and after the convention in 1964 we needed rest. It was people like Harry Belafonte, and I don’t know who else was involved, who supported [us] making it possible for eleven of us to go to Africa. Just to see Africa and try to—we had learned and heard so many things about Africa. I wasn’t sure whether I would be frightened or what, because what little we had read about Africa was just wild. We didn’t know really; we really didn’t know that they were our people. Although we realized they were our ancestors, we didn’t know how they act.³³

Even before she arrived in Guinea, Hamer was deeply impressed with what she saw. She later pointed out how significant it was for her to see Black flight attendants and a Black pilot: “When I saw a man come out of the cockpit who was black, right away then this meant that it was going to be different from what I had been [used to], what had been taught to me. It was something different.”³⁴ For Hamer, who had lived in Mississippi all her life—where Black people were still fighting to obtain some political and economic power—the image of a Black flight attendant and a Black pilot was especially meaningful and symbolic. It offered a glimpse into what she would witness when she arrived in Guinea—a newly independent nation governed by Black people.

When she finally completed the long journey to Guinea, Hamer marveled at the sight of President Sékou Touré and a delegation waiting at the airport. She and her colleagues were treated as honored guests and during their three-week stay had many opportunities to learn more about Guinea and its leadership under Touré. Throughout the visit, Hamer learned that Black people were not only in charge of transportation but also of every sector, including business and education.35 Hamer and other SNCC activists frequently met with government officials in Guinea and had the opportunity to engage in a series of gatherings and conversations with President Touré. These meetings created a space for Hamer and her colleagues to discuss “civil and human rights occurrences in their respective countries, the similarities and differences between the problems in Africa and America, and how to help each other.”³⁶

The trip to Guinea, which lasted from September 11 to October 4, 1964, provided some much-needed respite from the rigors of Hamer’s political work and extensive travels back home. Even more important, the experience forever crystallized in Hamer’s mind the significance of Black political power and boosted her pride in her Blackness and African heritage:

I saw some of the most intelligent people, you know, because I had never in my life seen where black people were running banks. I had never seen nobody behind a counter in a bank. I had never seen nobody black running the government in my life. So, it was quite a revelation to me. I was really learning something for the first time. Because then I could feel myself never, ever being ashamed of my ancestors and my background. I learned a lot. It taught me a lot while I was there. Because the welcome, and even the shame that we have here in this country, they don’t have it there. In performing and all that kind of stuff, we have been made to feel ashamed of so many things that they’re not.³⁷

Hamer’s words underscored how the 1964 trip to Guinea radically transformed her view of herself and left a lasting, positive effect on her psyche. “Being from the South we never was taught much about our African heritage,” she later explained in her autobiography, To Praise Our Bridges. “The way everybody talked to us, everybody in Africa was savages and really stupid people.”³⁸ Hamer’s experience in Guinea completely upended such a view of Africa and African people. By connecting to her African roots and seeing other Black people lead with such dignity and grace, Hamer began to see herself in a new light. Living in the Jim Crow South during this period did very little to boost the morale of African Americans, who existed as second-class citizens and were “treated worse than dogs,” as Hamer once told a group of reporters.39 In Guinea, Black people could live in freedom, proudly displaying their cultural artifacts. She later emphasized how much the image of Black people leading and living freely served as a source of “inspiration.” She took heart at the image of seeing Black people “just doing everything that I was used to seeing white people do.”⁴⁰

The experience of traveling to Guinea was also deeply personal for Hamer: “I felt a closeness in Africa.”⁴¹ Though she had no knowledge of her African ancestors, Hamer immediately felt a sense of familiarity with the people she encountered during her visit. “One thing I looked at so much was the African women. They were so graceful and so poised. I thought about my mother and my grandmother.”⁴² Hamer went on to decribe how the Guinean women resembled her relatives and even wore their hair and carried items on their heads in a smililar manner.⁴³ The sight brought her to tears, recognizing that she could have relatives in Guinea and would not even know it. “I probably got relatives right now in Africa, but we’ll never know each other because we’ve been so separated that I’ll never know them and they’ll never know me,” Hamer explained.⁴⁴ “I couldn’t speak the French language and a lot of them couldn’t speak English, but the comparison between my family and them was unbelieveable.”⁴⁵

While in Guinea, Hamer also had the opportunity to meet with several Guinean leaders who were very open and receptive to SNCC activists. For three hours on September 23, Hamer and her colleagues had the opportunity to meet with Alpha Diallo, the director general of the Ministry of Information and Tourism in Guinea and president of the African Association of Radio and Television Transmission.⁴⁶ Born in Conakry in 1935, Diallo had studied in France and returned to his native country where he would play an active role in Guinean politics. Throughout his political career, Diallo would hold several key positions in the Touré administration, including secretary of state for foreign affairs and head of Guinea’s delegation to the United Nations.⁴⁷ During his meeting with Hamer and her colleagues, Diallo used the opportunity to discuss the challenges Guinea faced and how the nation’s leaders hoped to address them. He pointed to some of the economic problems facing the country and how these challenges were directly tied to European colonialism. He highlighted some of their efforts to improve the economy and reminded the activists that Guinea was a socialist country—reaffirming the nation’s commitment to ensure that everyone’s needs would be equally met.48 He also addressed how the United States could support the efforts of Guinean leaders. The director general emphasized the significance of the US extending “moral support to the Guinea cause.”⁴⁹ He conveyed the message to SNCC activists that it was important to draw on the experiences of their trip to help inform Americans about the important developments taking place in Africa.⁵⁰

During the meeting, Diallo spoke of his plans to travel to the United States, where he hoped to “observe the revolution in Negro affairs.” He expressed confidence that the United States would grant full citizenship rights to African Americans, pointing to the significant historical developments taking place in the US and across the globe. He then proceeded to ask the activists to share their thoughts on the impending US presidential elections, scheduled to take place only two months later. Members of the SNCC delegation began to explain the challenges of electoral politics in the United States, pointing to the multiple ways Black people were barred from voting. Hamer took the opportunity to share with Diallo some of the challenges she encountered while trying to register to vote in Mississippi. Her statements helped to clarify some of Diallo’s misconceptions about Black life under the system of Jim Crow.⁵¹ Diallo was so moved by Hamer’s presence and her candid account that he presented the activist with a gift—an African musical instrument—at the conclusion of the meeting.⁵²

During their three-week stay, Hamer and the other members of the SNCC delegation had several other opportunities to meet with Guinean leaders who offered a glimpse into the inner workings of the newly independent African nation. In one instance, Hamer joined her colleagues in a meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Commerce, who offered a detailed discussion of the significance of cooperatives in Guinea.⁵³ Arguably the most important meeting Hamer and her colleagues had in Guinea was with President Sékou Touré. Although they had several opportunities, some informal, to speak with Touré during their stay, their meeting with him on September 26, 1964, was especially meaningful.54 The Guinean president began by emphasizing how the struggle for Black rights in the United States was deeply connected to the struggle for rights and freedom on the African continent. He went on to emphasize several key political points, which framed his own thinking and provided guidance for the activists in their own struggle for freedom in the United States.⁵⁵ “No solution of a problem can come about unless there is a consciousness that the problem exists,” he began. “We must not underestimate the role of organization.” He also cautioned SNCC activists to be mindful of who they identified as their leaders: “those who are selected to represent you [must be] carefully selected because the quality of their actions will affect society in one way or another.” And finally, he advised the activists to always convey a public image of unity in the struggle, despite differences and even internal divisions. “Do not try to stress the contradictions in the black community. On the national plane, however, we must try to project unity,” he concluded.⁵⁶

Although Touré’s words during this meeting and the many exchanges with the activists left a lasting impact on the entire SNCC delegation, they were especially transformative for Hamer. Belafonte, who had not only helped to fund the trip but also joined the delegation in Guinea, later recalled that Hamer was “the person who early on appeared to be the most affected by the trip.”⁵⁷ Dona Richards, one of the four women in the SNCC delegation, reinforced this perspective in the aftermath of the trip. She later noted how Hamer had “come alive” in Guinea.⁵⁸ No doubt the experience was personally transformative, but even more so, the trip sparked a radical shift in Hamer’s politics. She later described the entire experience as “just remarkable,” reflecting on how much the trip opened her eyes and changed the way she would approach her political work in the years to follow.⁵⁹

If Hamer’s earlier painful experiences in Winona served to deepen her commitment to addressing state-sanctioned violence, then it was her 1964 trip abroad that helped to greatly expand her vision of Black liberation. The trip provided a significant opportunity for Hamer and her colleagues to forge transnational political alliances and propelled them to frame their struggle for liberation as part of a global struggle for freedom. The trip helped to internationalize SNCC, linking the activists to “a worldwide movement and community.”60 Hamer’s exposure to Guinea and her dialogues and exchanges with President Touré and other African leaders during her visit also expanded her political perspective.⁶¹ It helped her develop, more than ever before, a global racial consciousness and an increased desire to pursue transnational networks and solidarities.⁶² When Hamer returned to the United States in October 1964, the trip’s impact was evident—her speeches in the months and years to follow would center on the important links between the history and experiences of African Americans and other people of color abroad.

“MAKE DEMOCRACY A REALITY FOR ALL.”

In the aftermath of the 1964 trip, SNCC activists forged an alliance with the Black nationalist leader Malcolm X, whom they had encountered while in West Africa. That year, Malcolm was on a six-month tour of West Africa and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. The tour provided the impetus for his decision to establish the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), which became a significant vehicle for Black internationalist organizing in the mid-1960s.⁶³ During his first public address on behalf of the new organization, Malcolm X—who by then had adopted the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz following his trip to Mecca—explained that the new group would seek to organize “everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent into one united force” and, eventually, to “unite with our brothers on the motherland, on the continent of Africa.”⁶⁴

SNCC leaders would take hold of this internationalist vision in 1964, when they crossed paths with Malcolm X at an airport in Nairobi, Kenya.⁶⁵ At the time, two members of the SNCC delegation, John Lewis and Donald Harris, had decided to extend their stay in Guinea with plans to travel to various parts of Africa. Their unexpected encounter marked the beginning of a deeper relationship between SNCC and Malcolm X.⁶⁶ As the organization began to embrace a more militant and internationalist platform, they drew heavily on Malcolm’s teachings. As James Forman, the former executive secretary of SNCC later explained, the organization’s leaders began to shift further away from a focus solely on civil rights after engaging with Malcolm X’s writings and speeches. Several years later, SNCC would declare itself a “human rights organization working for the liberation not only of Black people in the United States but of all oppressed peoples, especially those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.” That resolution, as Forman admitted, was one example of how Malcolm greatly influenced the organization.67 In addition, SNCC members would collaborate with Malcolm X on various occasions and extended their support for his work during the mid-1960s. Malcolm offered the same support in return.⁶⁸

On December 20, 1964, several weeks after returning to the United States from Guinea, Hamer shared the platform with Malcolm X at a political rally for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The two respected each other and certainly welcomed the opportunity to collaborate that evening.⁶⁹ The event, held at the Williams Institutional CME Church in Harlem, brought together mostly African Americans in the city who came to support the MFDP’s upcoming congressional challenge.⁷⁰ The structure of the iconic speech symbolized the political collaboration between Hamer and Malcolm. As Hamer delivered her speech in the Harlem church, Malcolm “worked extemporaneously to interpret and combine several core aspects of Hamer’s address into his own.”⁷¹ This arrangement symbolized the connection between the two activists and their complementary approaches to leadership, relying on passion, deep conviction, and a determination to transform the lives of others. Not suprisingly, Hamer maintained deep admiration and respect for Malcolm X. In one instance, she described him as “one of the greatest men I had ever met in my life.”⁷² She praised his courage and his uncanny ability to articulate the concerns of Black people in Amerca: “He told exactly how every Negro in this country feels and didn’t have the guts to say it.”⁷³

Hamer’s description of Malcolm could easily have been applied to herself. Her boldness and candor did not go unnoticed. When she and Malcolm took the stage in Harlem in 1964, they electrified the room, laying bare the many problems of American society. Although Hamer addressed many of the same issues she had cited in her earlier speeches, her remarks that evening in Harlem signified her more expansive political vision—one that was certainly shaped by her travels abroad and her conversations with African leaders. After highlighting the many challenges Black people encountered in Mississippi, Hamer decried American foreign policy, pointing out the hypocrisy of US leaders who maintained a greater commitment to entering global conflicts rather than addressing domestic concerrns. “We have made an appeal for the president of the United States and the attorney general to please protect us in Mississippi,” she began. “And I can’t understand how it’s out of their power to protect people in Mississippi. They can’t do that, but when a white man is killed in the Congo, they send people there.”74

Hamer’s reference to the Congo in 1964 was also indicative of her awareness of the interrelated struggles between Black people in Mississippi and those in the Congo. Indeed, African American journalist William Pickens had made such an observation many years earlier, describing Mississippi as the “American Congo.”⁷⁵ In Mississippi and in the Congo, Black people faced brutal labor conditions and unrelenting violence and terror. And in both contexts, white officials robbed the political rights and freedom from people of African descent.⁷⁶ In Mississippi, as in the Congo, a majority-Black labor force fueled local and national economies yet lacked access to landownership and legal protections. Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba directly confronted these issues, which would ultimately cost him his life. Born in 1925, Lumumba emerged as one of the leading African nationalists of the twentieth century. An uncompromising political leader, he advocated African unity, economic self-sufficiency, and true independence for Africa.⁷⁷

In the wake of violent uprisings across the country, the Congo eventually gained its independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960. On January 17, 1961, Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Congo, was assassinated in a coordinated transnational effort backed by the United States and Belgium in order to maintain imperial control in the region.⁷⁸ In the wake of independence, the Congo became embroiled in a series of political upheavals, both internal and external, against the backdrop of the Cold War.⁷⁹ Working to block the Soviet Union from gaining a foothold in the African country, US leaders backed the presidential election of Cyrille Adoula, a lackluster candidate who had distanced himself from Lumumba.80 President John F. Kennedy and members of his administration hoped Adoula’s election might quell internal political tensions. The Congo Crisis, however, would continue for several years, and in August 1964, Stanleyville, the Congo’s largest city, had fallen to rebels. On November 24, 1964, the United States sent troops to Stanleyville in an attempt to help Belgians regain control of the city and release the more than two thousand white foreigners who were being held hostage in the area.

These developments were foremost on Hamer’s mind in December 1964, when she delivered her speech in Harlem. Her emphasis on the “white man in the Congo” alluded to the lengths to which white Americans were willing to go to help other white people held hostage in the Congo—yet they could not be bothered to address the challenges facing Black citizens on US soil. These realities deeply troubled Hamer, who categorically rejected the notion that Black people needed to be patient and keep waiting for their freedom. “For three hundred years, we’ve given them time,” she reiterated. “And I have been tired so long, now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”⁸¹ Those powerful words would represent one of Hamer’s most iconic and memorable phrases. Far beyond being a catchy expression, it would come to signify her dogged determination to expand the rights and freedom of Black people in the United States and in every part of the globe.

This expansive vision of freedom would form the core of Hamer’s political message following her trip to Guinea. For Hamer, drawing the links between the experiences of Black people in the United States and those in Africa was not simply a matter of grappling with American foreign policy. The deep connection and relationship between African Americans and Africa guided her recognition. It was a connection and relationship that could not be disentangled. “I’ll never forget one of the things that was told to me during the time that I was in Atlantic City,” she recounted during a speech in Kentucky in the summer of 1968. “I got a letter and they had a lot of our pictures there and they had a red heart with something through the heart and they had a little reading under there that told me to go back to Africa.”⁸² Like so many African Americans before and after her, Hamer felt the sting of that racist insult. Yet she took the opportunity to educate the mostly white audience members by addressing the letter publicly and reiterating that all Americans, with the exception of Native Americans, were foreign to US soil. With her characteristic aplomb, Hamer retorted:

I don’t know whether that man [who wrote the letter] is in that audience or not—but I tell him we’ll make a deal: after they’ve sent all the Australians back to Australia, the Koreans back to Korea, the Chinese back to China, give the Indians their land back, and get on the Mayflower from whence they come, we will go home. See, it’s time for America to wake up and know that we’re not going to tolerate—we’re not begging anymore.83

Hamer went on to remind audience members that they should not be so quick to suggest that Black people “go back to Africa” when Black people did not choose to leave Africa in the first place. “America created this problem,” she explained. “[W]e were brought here on the slave ships of Africa and not only was the dignity taken from men—the black men—but also the women had to bear, not only their kids, but they had to bear the kids for the white slave owners.”⁸⁴ And slavery was the root cause of many of the issues that plagued white Americans. Without mincing words, Hamer boldly confronted those who resisted integration: “I’m fed up and sick and tired of you saying that you can’t stand for integration when you started it, when they started unloading the ships of the black people when we began to come in from Africa. You started it because I have cousins as white as any of you in here with blue eyes and gray hair—and a black man didn’t do it.”⁸⁵

In a speech delivered on May 27, 1970, at Loop College (now Harold Washington College) in Chicago, Illinois, Hamer went on to discuss American history, reflecting on how Europeans had snatched people of African descent from their native lands and left them with shards of memories and a constant feeling of displacement:

I remember when I was walking the streets of Africa, in 1964. I went to a palace—and as we know most of our people came from the West Coast of Africa—and walking the streets of Africa I saw a lot of people that looked a whole lot like my grandmother. And I wept like a baby because I said, “Now, right here—just like I’m living in America. And the black people over here is my own people. I can’t even speak the language because you’ve taken it from me.” They didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them.86

In a subsequent speech, delivered in 1976, Hamer carefully drew the connections between the experiences of Black people in the United States and other marginalized groups. Without hesitation, she offered a scathing critique of those who celebrated the bicentennial anniversary of the founding of the United States and the passage of the Declaration of Independence. Addressing a predominantly white audience, Hamer rhetorically asked: “How do you think black people, Indian people, and any other oppressed folk feel celebrating something that, years ago, that destroyed over twenty-five million of my people that was being brought here on the slave ships of Africa? Wiped out our heritage; raised families by our grandmothers; and taking our name.”⁸⁷

The answer to the question was already implied: people of color in the United States could not join in the celebrations. For people of color, the founding of the United States represented the formal beginning of a centuries-long struggle for rights and freedom. Hamer was not oblivious to the irony of the Declaration of Independence upholding the rhetoric of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” while Black Americans and other people of color on American soil were being subjected to racial violence, hate, and terror. reflecting on the unique circumstances of Black people, who were brought against their will to the New World, Hamer expressed deep anger and frustration. “I felt the anger of why this had to happen to us,” she explained during one interview. “We were so stripped and robbed of our background, we wind up with nothing. . . . And you know that was a real crime.”⁸⁸

For Hamer, the rupture—cultural and otherwise—facilitated by the transatlantic slave trade was further compounded by the negative and stereotypical depictions of African cultures that dominated mass media. She addressed this issue in 1976. “When I watch . . . television,” she explained, “and this guy playing the role of Tarzan, and the navy—[I see] the kind of things that you have distorted and said about my people in Africa.”89 Hamer credited her 1964 trip to Africa as helping her recognize these distortions: “Going to Africa, meeting people, and having a chance year after year to meet my people from Africa, it’s nothing for us to be ashamed of is being black.” reflecting her expansive vision of freedom, Hamer resisted a national framing of Black rights, arguing that “I am not fighting to be equal with [white Americans], but I’m fighting for human dignity.”⁹⁰

Hamer’s emphasis on the need to advance human rights and dignity provided the basis for her views on American foreign policy. Much like her earlier observations about the Congo, Hamer was especially attentive to the ways US leaders forcibly inserted themselves into African affairs under the guise of protecting global democracy. In one of her last public speeches, delivered at the University of Wisconsin in 1976, Hamer denounced the United States government for “placing mercenaries and Central Intelligence Agents to kill my people in Angola.”⁹¹ Her comments alluded to the US involvement in the Angola Crisis from 1974 to 1975. On November 4, 1975, Cuban leader Fidel Castro had sent troops to Angola following South Africa’s invasion of the country. It would later be revealed that US leaders were aware of the planned invasion of Angola and actually collaborated with South African troops in an effort to destabilize Angola—all the while disseminating a public image of noninvolvement. Hamer’s charge that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had plans to “kill my people in Angola” was consistent with the records that reveal how members of the CIA worked to hire and train private military contractors to fight members of the Angolan army.⁹² This development, much like earlier events in the Congo, underscored how US leaders were far more interested in the business of empire-making—seeking to influence and dominate the affairs of other nations—than in addressing domestic issues related to race relations.⁹³

Espousing an expansive vision of global liberation, Hamer boldly confronted American involvement in the Vietnam War—and she did so much earlier than Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and many other civil rights activists did.⁹⁴ In 1965, while attending a demonstration in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, Hamer spoke out against the Vietnam War shortly after she had sent a telegram to President Johnson asking him to “bring the people home from the Dominican Republic and Vietnam.”95 During this period, many Black leaders, including political strategist and pacifist Bayard Rustin, had yet to address US involvement in Vietnam, leaving Hamer as one of the lone voices in opposition to the war. While civil rights leaders like Rustin were initially silent on the Vietnam War, fearing that public denouncements would impede progressive coalition building, Hamer boldly confronted the issue.⁹⁶ “At that time, we felt very alone,” she admitted, “because when we start saying, ‘The war is wrong in Vietnam,’ well, people looked at us like we were something out of space.”⁹⁷ By 1968, many Black activists were boldly speaking out against Vietnam, following in Hamer’s footsteps. Hamer remained consistent in her stance. While speaking at a rally in Berkeley in 1969, she condemned the actions of US leaders, pointing out their blatant hypocrisy: “I am sick of the racist war in Vietnam when we don’t have justice in the United States. . . . And we are sick and tired of seeing people lynched, and raped, and shot down all across the country in the name of law and order and not even feeding the hungry across the country.”⁹⁸

Like many Black internationalists before and after her, Hamer refused to divorce developments taking place in the United States from global movements abroad. If Americans wanted peace and democracy in the world, Hamer emphasized, they needed to “start dealing with the problems in the United States, stop all of this urban renewal and model cities that’s pushing people out of a place to stay and start dealing with facts of life.”⁹⁹ From 1934 to 1962, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA) administered more than $120 billion to fund urban renewal projects.¹⁰⁰ In an interview with Black communist Jack O’Dell, Hamer further addressed the underlying problems of urban renewal programs, which devastated Black communities during the 1950s and ’60s. The FHA loans and other federal funds made available to cities to help them become economically viable lined the pockets of private developers—at the expense of poor Black people and other marginalized groups.¹⁰¹ Less than 2 percent of the new real estate developed through these programs was made available to Black Americans and other marginalized groups. Moreover, these federally funded projects led to the destruction of 20 percent of city housing units that were occupied by Black people.102 More than 60 percent of those displaced by these urban renewal programs were Black Americans, Latinx people, and other racial minorities.¹⁰³

Hamer decried these programs, which she aptly described as “Negro removal” programs.¹⁰⁴ “They want to tear the homes down and put a parking lot there,” Hamer explained. “[But] where are those people going? Where will they go?”¹⁰⁵ She emphasized how these renewal programs were simply new manifestations of white supremacy and reminded US leaders that their actions were on display for the world to see: “The world is looking at America and it is really beginning to show up for what it is really like. ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain.’ We can no longer ignore this, that America is not ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’”¹⁰⁶

For Hamer, the “facts of life” to which she alluded were unmistakable: “We got to change some curriculum and in making the change, we can have more peace, and real democracy when we bring the boys home and some of the billions of dollars that’s being spent in Vietnam can go into rural areas like Mississippi.”¹⁰⁷ Addressing those who insisted that the war in Vietnam was necessary to prevent the global spread and influence of communism, Hamer pointed out the holes in such logic by emphasizing how developments taking place at home shaped Americans’ perspectives of global issues. Although she did not embrace communism, she resisted US leaders who tried to use it as a cover for their own moral failings:

We want a change throughout the country, and the only way we can have a change is to bring those men home from Vietnam. People have been greatly punished—they have been criticized—because we are in a racist war that don’t give a man a chance, that carry him to Vietnam. And I don’t believe, you know, the first escape boat this country got to get away on is communism. Now, I know as much about communism as a horse know about New Year, but nobody and that mean nobody, have to tell me that it’s not something wrong with the system. And no communist have to tell me that I’m without food and clothing and a decent place to live in this country.¹⁰⁸

In effect, Hamer underscored how the efforts to draw a stark contrast between American democracy and communism were fundamentally undermined by how the United States mistreated its Black citizens. “The whole world is watching us today,” she reiterated during a 1969 MFDP rally in Lexington, Mississippi.109

As the decade came to a close, Fannie Lou Hamer joined a chorus of voices in the United States who were agitating for human rights and calling attention to the devaluation of Black lives at home and abroad. When the Massachusetts-based Pan-African Liberation Committee (PALC) called for a boycott of the Gulf Oil Corporation in 1973 because of its business—and tacit support of colonialism—in Portuguese territories in Africa, Hamer extended her full support.¹¹⁰ Organized by Randall Robinson, then a Harvard law student who went on to establish TransAfrica, PALC led a nationwide effort to call attention to the Gulf Oil Corporation’s role in financing Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and the Cape Verde islands.¹¹¹ “As Europe’s poorest country,” PALC leaders pointed out, “Portugal is incapable of financing its wars against African people alone.”¹¹² By demanding a boycott of all Gulf Oil Corporation products, PALC extended their support for African liberation movements of the period and turned to some of the nation’s leading Black activists and intellectuals for their endorsement. Hamer lent her support to the 1973 boycott and endorsed PALC’s statement, alongside more than fifty leaders, including Afro-Trinidadian theorist C. L. R. James, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, African American journalist Ethel L. Payne, and poet Don L. Lee (Haki R. Madhubuti).

Later reflecting on US involvement in Vietnam and on the African continent, Hamer expressed hope that US leaders would cease imposing their will on others while they left issues unaddressed at home. The fight for democracy, she pointed out, was disingenuous if the United States was only interested in democracy for some and not all. “We’ll be able to stand and fight together for the things that we rightfully deserve,” she passionately argued, “not in Vietnam, not in Biafra, but right here in the United States to make democracy a reality for all of the people of the world regardless of race or color.”¹¹³

At the core of her political vision was a belief that the freedom of one marginalized group was deeply connected to the liberation of other marginalized groups. The mantra “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” captures the essence of Hamer’s expansive political vision. For Hamer, the quest for freedom was incomplete if it failed to take into account all oppressed peoples, regardless of race, age, ability, religion, gender, class, or sexuality. And this perspective was still limited in scope if it only considered those living within the confines of the borders of the United States. Her vision of liberation was also deeply internationalist. In her political philosophy, the fight for the rights and liberation of marginalized people in the United States connected to the freedom struggles of other people of color around the world. By linking local and national concerns with global ones, Hamer set a precedent for future generations of Black activists.