Fannie Lou Hamer

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

"Nobody's free until everybody's free."

"I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free so that other people would be also free."

"You can pray until you faint, but unless you try to do something, the Lord will not help you."

"All of this is on account we want to be treated as human beings."

"Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

"We serve the God of this land as much as any white person serves God."

"The only thing they could do better than they do now, is to kill me, and it seems to me they've been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I was born."

"I'm going to stay on it, and when I go from here, I'm going to pray and I'm going to work, just as hard as I can."

"If the white man gives you anything - just remember when he gets ready he will take it right back. We have to take for ourselves."

"We've been working all these years in the cotton fields without pay."

"I have suffered hunger. I have suffered beating. I have suffered pistol whipping."

"They beat me until I was exhausted. All I could hear was 'Where is the money?'"

"I came to the realization that I had been cheated out of my constitutional rights."

"Queater, there is something you must know. There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part."

"I am tired of all this, and the only way to be treated right is to treat people right. We want our freedom now."

"I question America, I question when I said the Pledge of Allegiance."

"What is the point of having a choice if you cannot participate in the society?"

"We are citizens of these United States. We have worked and paid taxes."

"The whole world is watching America."

"Don't stop now. I'll always be with you 'til we bring about a change."

"I believe the freedom of every man and woman is hugely important."

"The question for me was how long could I continue to work and pay taxes to support the system that was destroying me?"

"I just want to do the best I can with what God has given me."

"I believe in the Bible, and I believe that if the Bible is the true word of God, we should not oppress anybody."

"They said, 'We're not going to let you register.' But I was determined."

"I have been beaten. I have been jailed. I have been persecuted."

"Whether you have a difference with the Pope or Karl Marx or anybody else, you have a right to your own opinion."

"People have to really suffer before they can enjoy anything. They say I am a radical. Let them call me that."

"I'm going to stay on it. You're going to have to kill me and take me out."