CONCLUSION

UNTIL ALL OF US ARE FREE

On March 14, 1977, several months shy of her sixtieth birthday, Fannie Lou Hamer passed away at the Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. She had entered the hospital weeks earlier after learning that her breast cancer had recurred. In the final years of her life, as she worked to keep Freedom Farm afloat, Hamer’s health had deteriorated. In January 1972, while protesting an act of violence against a young Black girl in Ruleville, Hamer suddenly collapsed in the picket line. She was immediately taken to the Delta Health Center. Since joining the civil rights movement in 1962, Hamer had worked tirelessly to assist others—traveling across the country, raising money and launching several initiatives in Sunflower County such as Freedom Farm, and raising her children—all the while spending little time attending to her own health needs.1

After Hamer’s collapse that afternoon in 1972, doctors listened to her describe a list of ailments that included blurry vision, fatigue, and aches and pains—all associated with untreated type 2 diabetes and hypertension, which had contributed to Hamer’s heart disease. The struggle to keep Freedom Farm afloat, which relied primarily on the funds she earned through speaking tours, weighed heavily on Hamer’s emotional health during her stay at the Health Center. In the ensuing weeks, Hamer took some time to rest and received follow-up treatment at Meharry Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. She even paused her speaking tour for six months, finally intent on attending to self-care and recovery. She seemed to be on the mend.2

By April 1972, however, she began to take on more commitments. That month, she opened up her home to Dr. Neil R. McMillen, a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, for what was supposed to be a series of oral interviews about her life and political work. Yet she struggled to make it through the planned interviews, still battling fatigue.³ Despite these ongoing concerns, she made the sacrifice to attend several events that year, including the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. When McMillen returned to Hamer’s home nearly a year later to continue conducting the interview they had started, Hamer admitted that she was still not in good health. “Is it serious?” McMillen asked. “Yes, I think so,” she replied. “I’m thankful that I made it this far,” she said, characteristically adding, “I don’t know how many more steps I’ll have to make, but I’ll keep going.”⁴

Hamer’s statements captured her resolve to keep fighting for civil and human rights—even at the expense of her own health. And her words foreshadowed what was to come as she resumed her speaking tour and continued working at Freedom Farm. In January 1974, she was readmitted to the hospital for “nervous exhaustion.” In the months to follow, she would make several hospital visits, and in the spring of 1976, Hamer underwent a mastectomy.⁵ When her friend Eleanor Holmes Norton learned that Hamer could not afford the prosthesis she desired, Norton purchased one.⁶ This small gesture lifted Hamer’s spirits during an otherwise challenging period.

Hamer’s growing list of health concerns led to more financial difficulties. With each hospital visit and new medications, Hamer and her husband, Pap, sank deeper and deeper into debt. During this period, Pap, who was well into his sixties, took on a new job to bring in more income.⁷ The couple relied on the kindness of strangers—several activists and friends donated funds to aid with Hamer’s medical expenses. “I have been unable to get around to work during the past 26 months and for that reason the chest is at rock bottom,” she admitted to Rev. Marion Elaine Myles in letter dated August 23, 1976.⁸ Though she maintained her resolve to keep fighting, Hamer had indeed hit rock bottom. She battled depression in these last few months, expressing much frustration and immense disappointment that many of the individuals she had supported were nowhere to be found. June Johnson, one of the activists who had been jailed and beaten with Hamer years earlier in Winona, later recalled finding Hamer agitated during a visit. Hamer had asked a neighbor to come by to comb her hair, and hours later, they had not arrived.9 What appeared to be a small matter was a deeply painful experience for Hamer—she had spent her life putting others before herself and, in this particular moment, the love and sacrifices she had extended were not being reciprocated.

Although she lamented the ways too many people looked the other way, Johnson’s arrival that afternoon was one expression of love that Hamer needed—and appreciated—in these last few weeks of her life. Thankfully, it was not the only one. In those last few months, Hamer witnessed an outpouring of love in the community and beyond for her life’s work and contributions. Most notably, local activists came together to celebrate Fannie Lou Hamer Day in fall 1976, honoring her with a Paul Robeson Award for humanitarian service. During the celebration, attendees pooled their resources to aid Hamer with medical expenses, raising more than $2,000 that evening.¹⁰

In February 1977, while battling illness and bouts of depression, Hamer agreed to do a phone interview with African American journalist Annette J. Samuels for the New York Amsterdam News. It was a follow-up interview to one that had taken place a year earlier. Although she was going through a dark period, Hamer likely agreed to do the interview in hopes of securing some financial support for her mounting medical bills. Perhaps she also welcomed the opportunity to reflect on all that she had accomplished in her life, sensing that the end was near. The interview, one of the last Hamer gave before her passing, highlighted her remarkable political career as well as the many challenges she had endured in her lifetime. As she had done countless times before, Hamer shared with Samuels the experience of attending the 1962 mass meeting in Sunflower County, Mississippi, where she met SNCC activists for the first time. “I had never heard that I had the right to vote,” she reiterated. “I was curious. So I went to the meeting.”¹¹ She then went on to recount the first time she attempted to register to vote, traveling with eighteen activists from Ruleville to Indianola: “That was the beginning of my getting involved in the civil rights movement.”12

Although the interview focused primarily on Hamer’s political career, it also highlighted various aspects of Hamer’s personal life. She and Samuels discussed Hamer’s relationship with Pap, noting that the two had been married for thirty-one years. When asked about how her political work affected her marriage, Hamer emphasized a point she had made many times before: “He, Mr. Hamer, is the boss of the house. We respect each other.” Emphasizing the spirit of unity that guided their relationship, both at home and in public, Hamer added, “I stand by him to see what we can do to set this country straight.”¹³ Though she spoke positively about her relationship with Pap, Hamer admitted that her health challenges and the financial problems were taking a toll on the family. Following the death of her daughter Dorothy in 1967, Hamer took in Dorothy’s young daughters, Lenora and Jacqueline, both of whom she formally adopted in 1969. With very limited financial resources in 1977, Hamer explained to Samuels that Lenora, age ten, and Jacqueline, age nine, were helping Pap in the cotton fields to ensure the family would have food to eat. “We still have hanging over our heads a $2,000 doctor bill from when I [got] sick two years ago,” Hamer added.¹⁴

The financial challenges in the Hamer home only intensified in the weeks to follow. One month after the interview with Samuels, Hamer was readmitted, for the last time, to the Delta Health Center for treatment related to breast cancer, as well as her ongoing heart disease and diabetes. In a brief interview with Samuels, Pap expressed deep concern about how the recent hospitalization would further impact their finances. “It’s never too good,” he told Samuels. “And now with Fannie in the hospital again, we’re going to have even more bills coming in.”¹⁵ Concerns about bills, however, would wane in comparison to the devastating news that would soon follow. After several days of crying in agony as she lay in a hospital bed and singing the hymns that had brought comfort many times before, Hamer passed away from heart failure on March 14, 1977. The news of her death spread rapidly throughout Mississippi, across the nation, and around the globe.

Six days later, thousands of people gathered in Ruleville, Mississippi, to honor Fannie Lou Hamer, known affectionately as “Mrs. Hamer.”16 The funeral drew a remarkable group of prominent figures from the civil rights–Black Power era, with activists and leaders present to pay their respects to Hamer. These included Hamer’s mentor Ella Baker; former chairman of SNCC Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture); the national director of the Urban League, Vernon Jordan; former SNCC chairman and future US congressman John Lewis; Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW); and former SNCC chairman H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin).¹⁷ President Jimmy Carter authorized a military plane to take Andrew Young, then US ambassador to the United Nations, Congressman Charles Diggs, and several others to Hamer’s funeral.¹⁸ Young delivered a moving eulogy, praising Hamer’s life of courage and sacrifice and emphasizing her remarkable influence on the lives of all Americans. “No one in America has not been influenced or inspired by Mrs. Hamer,” he said. Young, who had played an instrumental role in getting Hamer out of the Winona jailhouse in 1963, credited her political work—Hamer’s “sweat and blood”—for sowing the seeds of change in America.¹⁹ “None of us would have been where we are now, had she not been there then,” he later remarked.²⁰ Carmichael, with whom Hamer had organized during the 1960s, affirmed Young’s assessment at the funeral, pointing out that so many people were present “not because she is Mrs. Hamer, but because she is us—she is the best of us.”²¹

This message reverberated all across the nation. Two months after Hamer’s death, Marcia Gillespie, editor in chief of Essence magazine, penned a moving essay on Hamer’s life and legacy. She told the story of how she had traveled to Ruleville, Mississippi, to meet Hamer, one of her heroines, six years earlier. “I walked into the bare little airport,” Gillespie explained, “and was immediately embraced— ample bosom, big arms, a smile with a touch of gold, a moon face that showed the tracks of pain and sorrow and eyes that spoke of a soul at peace. I was home.”²² As she had always done, Hamer made her visitor feel at home, welcoming Gillespie and allowing the journalist to spend a few days with the family. It was a recurring scene in the Hamer household—people walked in and out to break bread with Hamer, listening intently to her words of wisdom and basking in her love and hospitality. For Gillespie, the encounter with Hamer in 1971 was transformative:

I met a woman who defied any little platform or pedestal I might have wished to place her on. I met a woman whose commitment to making this a decent world was total. A woman who lived a life of faith, who reminded me of the power of prayer and hope, who would not belittle herself by hating, who long discovered that her capacity for loving was boundless, who gave it freely and easily without fear of rejection or depletion. I met a woman beautiful because she loved, a fighter because of love and indomitable in her love. She made me want to do better, be bigger and I basked in her warmth.23

Gillespie’s remarks captured the beauty and essence of Hamer’s life and legacy. Hamer’s courage and passion were contagious; she had the remarkable ability to leave a positive impact on anyone who crossed her path. As this book attests, Hamer has been a transformative figure in my own life. In the Christian ideal, she lived her life in sacrifice of others—always seeking ways to improve their circumstances. A passionate advocate for social justice, Hamer devoted her life to securing civil and human rights. And when she spoke, she spoke with a clear sense of purpose and radical honesty that had the ability to pierce through one’s soul. Long after Hamer’s death, her powerful words—political visions, freedom dreams, and hopes for the nation—live on.

“WE’VE GOT TO DO THE WORK.”

On Saturday, August 19, 2020, Kamala Harris confidently walked across the stage at the Democratic National Convention at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Convention, shared remotely to curb the spread of COVID-19, drew only a portion of its usual in-person attendance. Yet that evening, millions of Americans tuned in to hear then-Senator Harris of California accept the nomination for vice president of the United States. Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, made history that night, following in the footsteps of Black journalist Charlotta Bass, also from the state of California.24 In 1952, Bass became the first Black woman to run for vice president in the United States, running alongside Progressive Party presidential candidate Vincent Hallinan, an attorney from San Francisco.²⁵ Although the campaign was unsuccessful—Hallinan and Bass only garnered 14,000 votes—it set the stage for Kamala Harris’s run sixty-eight years later.²⁶

When Harris took to the stage at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, the historic importance of the moment was undeniable. In only a matter of months, she would become the first Black woman and first person of Indian descent to be elected vice president on a winning party ticket. On the evening of August 19, however, she stood before a live and televised audience to formally accept the nomination and express her gratitude to those who made it possible. “Greetings America. It is truly an honor to be speaking with you,” Harris began. “That I am here tonight is a testament to the dedication of generations before me. Women and men who believed so fiercely in the promise of equality, liberty, and justice for all.” reflecting on the hundredth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Harris acknowledged the courageous women who had “organized, testified, rallied, marched, and fought—not just for their vote, but for a seat at the table.”²⁷ These women, she noted, provided a source of inspiration for us all “to pick up the torch, and fight on. Women like Mary Church Terrell and Mary McLeod Bethune. Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash. Constance Baker Motley and Shirley Chisholm. We’re not often taught their stories,” she added. “But as Americans, we all stand on their shoulders.”²⁸

By evoking Fannie Lou Hamer that evening, Kamala Harris reinforced the activist-intellectual’s enormous significance in shaping United States history. Alongside a cadre of other courageous Black American women, Hamer, the Mississippi sharecropper turned activist, occupied a meaningful place in Harris’s personal and political narrative. Far beyond offering a source of inspiration, Hamer’s ideas helped to frame Harris’s political vision that evening. After highlighting her family’s history and the values and lessons she learned from her relatives along the way, Harris turned her attention to the state of affairs in the United States. She emphasized some of the most pressing national concerns, including the failures of the Trump administration, high unemployment, and the coronavirus pandemic. Though she acknowledged how the virus devastated the lives of millions of Americans, Harris underscored how structural racism fueled health disparities in the United States. “While this virus touches us all, let’s be honest; it is not an equal opportunity offender,” Harris remarked. “Black, Latino and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately. This is not a coincidence,” she further explained. “It is the effect of structural racism.” Pointing to disparities and inequities in all sectors of American society—including health care, education and technology, housing and employment, and policing and criminal justice—Harris called on Americans to take an active role in dismantling structural racism. “And let’s be clear,” she noted, “there is no vaccine for racism. We’ve got to do the work.” Evoking Hamer for the second time that evening, Harris insisted that because of our linked fate, all Americans must join the fight to create a more inclusive democracy: “We’ve got to do the work to fulfill that promise of equal justice under law. Because none of us are free . . . until all of us are free.”29

Vice President Kamala Harris’s reference to Hamer’s political vision at the 2020 Democratic National Convention is a testament to the enduring power of her ideas even generations later. Hamer had reiterated this message on numerous occasions, before diverse audiences throughout the US South and other parts of the nation, during the 1960s and ’70s. It signified the basis of Hamer’s political philosophy—the belief that we must all work together, as Americans, for the betterment of society. Those words—“none of us are free until all of us are free”—captured the essence of Hamer’s political work and vision. She loved Black people and vigorously fought to improve their socioeconomic status in American society, yet she did not limit her work and focus to Black people alone. A courageous freedom fighter, Hamer fought for the rights and liberation of all marginalized people. She used her powerful voice to propel others to do better—and to be better.

In Hamer’s vision, which still resonates today, liberation cannot occur in fragments—it can only take place in a holistic fashion. The political gains of one group mean little if other groups remain disenfranchised. And likewise, if one group suffers, other groups cannot experience real joy. The mantra “None of us are free until all of us are free” also reinforces the idea that the fight for justice must be a global one and intersectional in nature, attending to the overlapping systems of oppression that shape the lives and experiences of each individual. Hamer’s political vision was grounded in the spirit of unity, solidarity, and, most of all, action. By emphasizing how our fates are linked, Hamer called upon everyone in the United States to play an active role in building an inclusive democracy—one that would live up to the constitutional ideals on which the nation was founded. The work of democracy remains unfinished, and the roadblocks are many, but Hamer’s vision of America and her enduring message to all Americans offer a way forward.