Fannie Lou Hamer : America's freedom fighting woman /

Drawing heavily from oral histories and interviews with Fannie Lou Hamer, her family and friends, and her fellow civil rights workers, Brooks (Willamette Univ.), who has written previously on Hamer in A Voice That Could Stir an Army (CH, Jan'15, 52-2731) and directs a website of resources on the activist, here presents an intimate account of Hamer's life and work for The Library of African American Biography. Hamer's personal life and political activism were inseparable, each informing the other, and Brooks weaves them together in a highly readable narrative that feels fresh and immediate, especially at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. Music was central to Hamer's life--her 1963 album Songs My Mother Taught Me was one of the book's many primary sources--and lyrics from hymns and spirituals add depth to passages throughout the text. The afterword, "It's in Your Hands," uses the "transformative power" of Hamer's story as a call to action for today's readers. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels. --DeeDee Baldwin, Mississippi State University Libraries

This in-depth biography of a civil rights icon also serves as unflinching testimony to the horrors of racism. Fannie Lou Hamer (1917--77) was born in Mississippi to parents who were sharecroppers. The institutionalized deprivation and everyday hardships she experienced as an African American child growing up in abject poverty turned into personal physical attacks and sexual assaults when she became a crusader for Black suffrage during the 1960s. Despite chronic physical and emotional pain, Hamer, perhaps most often remembered for her famous statement, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired," championed racial equality, women's rights, and educational parity for over two decades. As the director of Find Your Voice: The Online Resource for Fannie Lou Hamer Studies, author Brooks (A Voice That Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement, 2014) had unusual access to Hamer's personal correspondence and family members for this biography. She has documented a life of unparalleled dedication set against a background of unrelenting discrimination, personal tragedy, and social upheaval. Sympathetic and authoritative, at times difficult to read, this is a testimonial to a courageous woman and her deep commitment to human rights.