Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America

by Keisha N. Blain

Overview

National Book Critics Circle 2021 Biography Finalist

53rd NAACP Image Award Nominee: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography/Autobiography

“[A] riveting and timely exploration of Hamer’s life. . . . Brilliantly constructed to be both forward and backward looking, Blain’s book functions simultaneously as a much needed history lesson and an indispensable guide for modern activists.”—New York Times Book Review

Ms. Magazine “Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us – 2021” · KIRKUS STARRED REVIEW · BOOKLIST STARRED REVIEW · Publishers Weekly Big Indie Books of Fall 2021

Explores the Black activist’s ideas and political strategies, highlighting their relevance for tackling modern social issues including voter suppression, police violence, and economic inequality.

“We have a long fight and this fight is not mine alone, but you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free.”
—Fannie Lou Hamer

A blend of social commentary, biography, and intellectual history, Until I Am Free is a manifesto for anyone committed to social justice. The book challenges us to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual of the civil rights movement as we grapple with contemporary concerns around race, inequality, and social justice.

Award-winning historian and New York Times best-selling author Keisha N. Blain situates Fannie Lou Hamer as a key political thinker alongside leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks and demonstrates how her ideas remain salient for a new generation of activists committed to dismantling systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe.

Despite her limited material resources and the myriad challenges she endured as a Black woman living in poverty in Mississippi, Hamer committed herself to making a difference in the lives of others. She refused to be sidelined in the movement and refused to be intimidated by those of higher social status and with better jobs and education. In these pages, Hamer’s words and ideas take center stage, allowing us all to hear the activist’s voice and deeply engage her words, as though we had the privilege to sit right beside her.

More than 40 years since Hamer’s death in 1977, her words still speak truth to power, laying bare the faults in American society and offering valuable insights on how we might yet continue the fight to help the nation live up to its core ideals of “equality and justice for all.”

Includes a photo insert featuring Hamer at civil rights marches, participating in the Democratic National Convention, testifying before Congress, and more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807061503
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	42,715
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Keisha N. Blain, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, is an award-winning historian, professor, and writer. She is the author of the multi-prize-winning book 'Set the World on Fire' and co-editor, with Ibram X. Kendi, of the #1 New York Times bestseller 'Four Hundred Souls.' She is a Professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University and a columnist for MSNBC. Follow her on Twitter @KeishaBlain and on Instagram @KeishaNBlain.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
A Long Fight Ahead

CHAPTER ONE
Let Your Light Shine

CHAPTER TWO
Tell It Like It Is

CHAPTER THREE
We Want Leaders

CHAPTER FOUR
The Special Plight of Black Women

CHAPTER FIVE
An Expansive Vision of Freedom

CHAPTER SIX
Try to Do Something

CONCLUSION
Until All of Us Are Free

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Image Credits

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2021

Blain (history, Univ. of Pittsburgh; Set the World on Fire; Four Hundred Souls) blends biography with intellectual history to discuss Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–77), her instrumental civil rights activism, and her influence which resounds in the 21st century. Hamer was a grassroots organizer who came from a sharecropping background in Mississippi. Her main civil rights concerns were voter suppression and police brutality—the same battles being fought by contemporary Black Lives Matter activists. Blain uses extensive primary sources (including excerpts from Hamer's speeches, and accounts of her experiences of sexual assault and medical trauma) to illustrate how Hamer "turned her pain into political action." Blain effectively conveys the racism and sexism Hamer faced in her fight for equality and liberation and shows how it impacted her relationships to both the civil rights movement and the women's liberation movement; she also establishes the modernity and contemporary relevance of Hamer's proto-intersectional politics (Kimberlé Crenshaw would coin "intersectionality" in 1989). VERDICT This excellent introduction to Hamer and her life is well-contextualized; recommended for all readers.—Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL

Library Journal

★ 2021-08-18
A celebration of the life of Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977), a disabled, working-class, Black civil rights activist whose legacy continues to influence the world’s most groundbreaking movements for human rights.

Hamer officially joined the civil rights movement in 1962, when, at the age of 44, she attended a rally organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Ruleville, Mississippi. There, she learned that she had the right to vote, a revelation that inspired her to spend her life organizing for Black voting rights. Her work led not only to her imprisonment, but also verbal and physical abuse. Although she is best known for her electoral work, Hamer’s vision for her people extended far beyond the ballot box. Toward the end of her life, Hamer founded Freedom Farm, a collective designed to alleviate food and housing insecurity among poor Black farmers in Mississippi. A prolific lecturer and vocal advocate for concrete action, Hamer based her theories and practices on her past experiences as a sharecropper. Having survived polio, poverty, and an unwanted hysterectomy, Hamer was supremely articulate about the ways in which racism, classism, and sexism have always devastatingly intersected in Black women’s lives. Today, her legacy lives on through individuals ranging from Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi to Vice President Kamala Harris. Blain backs up her trenchant analysis with extensive research and relevant quotes from her subject. The scholarly text brims with heart, and the author’s affection for Hamer infuses every line. Readers will walk away both informed and inspired. Then they should go seek out Kate Clifford Larson’s Walk With Me (2021), a good companion read.

A highly readable, poignant study of the life and influence of a civil rights legend.

Kirkus Reviews

Blain backs up her trenchant analysis with extensive research and relevant quotes from her subject. The scholarly text brims with heart, and the author’s affection for Hamer infuses every line. Readers will walk away both informed and inspired . . . . A highly readable, poignant study of the life and influence of a civil rights legend.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“[A] vivid, passionate biography. . . . the author’s rightful and infectious admiration of Hamer shines through on every page. Until I Am Free is a must-have for readers interested in American history and civil rights activism.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

“As talented a storyteller and cultural critic as she is a historian, Keisha Blain has written a history of Fannie Lou Hamer that also challenges readers to look to her legacy as a guide for tackling current issues of voter suppression, state-sanctioned violence, women’s inequality, and racism.”
—Ms. Magazine, “Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest Us – 2021”

“Dr. Keisha Blain’s beautiful prose and infectious passion for uncovering our historical roots tell Hamer’s amazing life story. . . . Until I Am Free allows the reader to see a long part of the political and cultural lines from Fannie Lou Hamer to Vice President Kamala Harris.”
—Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee

“This is a book for everyone who doesn’t know the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer and for everyone who thinks they do.”
—Melissa Harris-Perry, author of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

“A rich, detailed, and moving portrait of one of the most important civil rights activists in American history.”
—Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“Keisha Blain brings Fannie Lou Hamer and her fight for liberation to life in the exhilarating Until I Am Free. Alight with curiosity and passion, Blain’s view of Hamer is both intimate and political, exquisitely sensitive to the challenges faced by a Black woman sharecropper whose body was too often the site of white supremacist, misogynist violence, and whose revolutionary story has too rarely been framed as such. Until I Am Free corrects that omission and will be an invaluable resource for generations to come.”
—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger

“Keisha Blain’s magnificent Until I Am Free introduces us to Hamer the political thinker, the strategist and theorist, the internationalist whose expansive vision of freedom embraced the oppressed everywhere. A pathbreaking contribution to our history and a precious guide for today’s activists fighting for the world Hamer envisioned.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“With elegant, passionate, and powerful prose, award-winning historian Keisha Blain weaves together the political and intellectual legacy of Mississippi sharecropper and visionary political leader Fannie Lou Hamer with the contemporary struggle for racial justice and human freedom. . . . This book expands the boundaries of the Black radical political and intellectual tradition and re-centers a voice that is too prescient to be ignored.”
—Barbara Ransby, author of Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century

From the Publisher