A Voice That Could Stir an Army

Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement

By: Maegan Parker Brooks

Narrated by: Kristyl Dawn Tift

Length: 13 hrs

Publisher's summary

A sharecropper, a warrior, and a truth-telling prophet, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) stands as a powerful symbol not only of the 1960s Black freedom movement, but also of the enduring human struggle against oppression. A Voice That Could Stir an Army is a rhetorical biography that tells the story of Hamer's life by focusing on how she employed symbols - images, words, and even material objects such as the ballot, food, and clothing - to construct persuasive public personae, to influence audiences, and to effect social change.

Drawing upon dozens of newly recovered Hamer texts and recent interviews with Hamer's friends, family, and fellow activists, Maegan Parker Brooks moves chronologically through Hamer's life. Brooks recounts Hamer's early influences, her intersection with the Black freedom movement, and her rise to prominence at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Brooks also considers Hamer's lesser-known contributions to the fight against poverty and to feminist politics before analyzing how Hamer is remembered posthumously. The book concludes by emphasizing what remains rhetorical about Hamer's biography, using the 2012 statue and museum dedication in Hamer's hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi, to examine the larger social, political, and historiographical implications of her legacy.

©2014 University Press of Mississippi (P)2017 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"This is the best book on the famous civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and one of the better books on the civil rights movement in general." ( CHOICE)

Phenomenal Book

I love Fannie Lou Hamer and this book was awesome!!! I learned so much about her life and the movement.

A rhetorical biography of Fannie Lou Hamer.

Fannie Lou Hamer, I think, has had a minor renaissance in the public's imagination over the past few years. Kate Clifford Larson (who also has a biography of Harriet Tubman), Keisha Blain, and Maegan Parker Brooks all have new biographies of her in the last three years. There is also a children's picture book only a couple of years older. And PBS documentary of Hamer in 2022. Maybe it is more about who I am listening to and the era I tend to read about. (Jemar Tisby, who lives in the Mississippi Delta area and is a historian of the 20th century Civil Rights movement, talks about Hamer as one of his heroes).

I read Keisha Blain's short biography of Fannie Lou Hamer just over a year ago. Hamer was also a significant player in the biography of Stokley Carmichael. And many of the broader histories of the civil rights movement include discussions of Hamer's work and influence. But A Voice That Could Stir an Army is the most detailed look at her life, especially the rhetoric I have read so far. Blain's biography was intended to be a short, accessible introduction to Hamer at only 135 pages of the main text. Brooks' biography is just over 100 pages longer, and while much of the difference is a close analysis of Hamer's speeches, many details here help to round out Hamer's legacy.

I have not read a biography like A Voice That Could Stir an Army. It has traditional biographical details, but the main focus of the biography is understanding Hamer's rhetoric and how that rhetoric fits within the broader Black Freedom Movement. Hamer's participation in the civil rights movement came later than Rosa Parks or Ella Baker, although Hamer was only 3 and 14 years younger than they were.

Fannie Lou Hamer was tricked into signing an employment contract as a sharecropper at the age of six. She attended school between picking seasons; Black schools had a short school year to encourage children to work in cotton fields. At 12, she dropped out of school to help support her parents (although there was little access to high school for Black students then.) In 1944, she became the time and record keeper and soon after married her husband, Perry (Pap) Hamer. Fannie Lou was sterilized without her permission while being treated for a tumor, but they eventually adopted four children and partially raised a child from Pap's first marriage.

Hamer first heard a speech by Bob Moses of SNCC in 1962 at her local church. Moses was recruiting people to register to vote. This was Hamer's first understanding that voting was possible for her as a Black woman in Mississippi. She soon attempted to register to vote and was immediately fired from her job as a sharecropper. She attempted to register again and was forced to temporarily leave the county because of threats of violence against her and her family. It was her third attempt when she was allowed to register.

One of the details that I think many modern readers of that history will be surprised to learn is that the names of those attempting to register and who actually registered to vote were printed in local newspapers. This was very clearly intended as an intimidation tactic. Those that registered would lose their jobs and their future potential for jobs. Hamer's employer was called when she left the county courthouse on that first attempt. Her husband, who knew about the attempt, was notified of her firing and their eviction from their house before she could return from the county courthouse. Fannie Lou Hamer never again had a regular job in Sunflower County. She was hired by SNCC as a field organizer in part because there was no other work available to her.

Part of what is helpful about this biography is that Brooks traces some of the rhetorical shifts of the later civil rights era. Economics was always a part of the reality of racism. And the 1963 March on Washington was for "Jobs and Freedom." But as legal segregation was dismantled, economic issues became more salient. It was not just that you could be individually economically retaliated against for attempting to vote but also that systems existed to maintain economic control. For example, Fannie Lou Hamer was initially able to get a contract for Head Start, and that program was managed and controlled by the black community. But while the Head Start continued, local and state officials worked to make the Head Start organization a contractor that worked under a white-controlled agency instead of being an independent nonprofit. It exactly points like this that eventually gave rise to Critical Race Theory, which looked explicitly at systems, not just individual actions.

Fannie Lou Hamer is somewhat of a tragic figure, not unlike Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks spent years in desperate poverty and in fear of violent retaliation after the bus boycott. Fannie Lou Hamer died at 59 of cancer, 15 years after starting to work on voting rights. She and her husband struggled to make ends meet. She did not seek care for her cancer earlier enough because of their poverty. One of her daughters died; she was denied treatment for internal bleeding because she was Fannie Lou Hamer's daughter. Fannie and Pap then raised their children as their adopted children because their father was disabled from injuries in the Vietnam War. Fannie Lou Hamer's last remaining (grand) child died of cancer just a few weeks ago at 56 years old. The other children died at 47, 53, and 64.

Brooks paints a picture of Fannie Lou Hamer that is complex and nuanced. Hamer never wanted to be called a feminist. But as Brooks shows, her work paid attention to issues of gender and race in ways that could be considered an early version of intersectionality. She sought to help people with jobs by creating the Freedom Farm and Head Start program, but some of the management decisions (and the systems of the community as a whole) did not lead to long-term viability. Hamer pointed out issues of class both inside and outside of the Black community and was able to change national elections systems, but was not able to win any of the elections where she ran. He fought for health care for others but did not seek health care for herself early enough. As illustrated in At The Dark End of the Street, Hamer's life was an example of how sexism and sexual violence were part of the reality of Jim Crow-styled segregation and the civil rights movement.

Maegan Parker Brooks raises good questions about how Fannie Lou Hamer is often flattened in our memory of her. She is made into both a hero and an everyman persona. She is remembered for her speeches at the Democratic National Convention but less remembered for her lawsuits trying to force recognition of Black elected officials. She is remembered as a gifted speaker but is often portrayed as only speaking extemporaneously instead of working to develop her speaking skills and hone her speeches over time.

I look forward to reading another biography or two of Hamer in the future because the different retellings of her story do matter. But I strongly recommend this biography because it so clearly presents her as a figure with agency.

All Encompassing

This Book goes into real detail about the important struggle for Voting Rights in America and the Warrior who rose from the ranks of the very people most deeply impacted by rampant voter suppression. The navigation through Fannie Lou Hamer's extensive political work and programs brings a better understanding to what the fight was really for and how the Civil Rights Era left some issues unsolved. This is not because the fight was stopped but how varied the issues became and where people became divided by their goals and principles. Fannie Lou Hamer fought on the principle that the human race (no matter color or socio-economic status) deserved to live comfortable and free lives, without struggling for the benefits of others while being denied the most basic rights and needs.

Fannie Lou Hamer

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine...
A song that would become something like an anthem, a rallying call.

"We ain't free yet.
Nobody's free until everybody's free."

The art and power of her rhetoric and speech.
If there ever was an Ancestral shrine, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer would occupy one of the most coveted spots of front and center.🖤👑💫

The bottom up approach, its nuances and significance of its orientation. This narrative begins its examination of chronicling what the author coins Hamer's rhetoric, her speeches, persona, image and symbolism. This larger than life legacy of iconic, truth telling warrior activist, her biolgraphical journey is journalistic detailed in this empowering, master narrative.
A Voice That Can Stir an Army.

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

Undeserved suffering is redemptive echoes Hamer, as ascribed in the book of Luke New Testament.

On Feminism:
"Fannie Lou Hamer wasn't a feminist, she was a humanist. She had a broader vision.
My liberation is different from yours. The same thing that caused me from being liberated, caused my Black man from being liberated.
I'm not hung up on liberating myself from
the Black man. I have a Black husband, 6'3, 240 pounds and a size 14 shoe that I don't want to be liberated from. We are here to work side by side with this Black man in trying to bring liberation to all people."