Walk with Me

A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer

By: Kate Clifford Larson

Narrated by: Karen Chilton

She was born the 20th child in a family that had lived in the Mississippi Delta for generations, first as enslaved people and then as sharecroppers. She left school at 12 to pick cotton, as those before her had done, in a world in which white supremacy was an unassailable citadel. She was subjected without her consent to an operation that deprived her of children. And she was denied the most basic of all rights in America—the right to cast a ballot—in a state in which Blacks constituted nearly half the population.

And so Fannie Lou Hamer lifted up her voice. Starting in the early 1960s and until her death in 1977, she was an irresistible force, not merely joining the swelling wave of change brought by civil rights but keeping it in motion. Working with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which recruited her to help with voter-registration drives, Hamer became a community organizer, women's rights activist, and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She summoned and used what she had against the citadel—her anger, her courage, her faith in the Bible, and her conviction that hearts could be won over and injustice overcome. She used her brutal beating at the hands of Mississippi police, an ordeal from which she never fully recovered, as the basis of a televised speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention, a speech that the mainstream party—including its standard-bearer, President Lyndon Johnson—tried to contain. But Fannie Lou Hamer would not be held back. For those whose lives she touched and transformed, for those who heard and followed her voice, she was the embodiment of protest, perseverance, and, most of all, the potential for revolutionary change.

Kate Clifford Larson's biography of Fannie Lou Hamer is the most complete ever written, drawing on recently declassified sources on both Hamer and the civil rights movement, including unredacted FBI and Department of Justice files. It also makes full use of interviews with Civil Rights activists conducted by the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, and Democratic National Committee archives, in addition to extensive conversations with Hamer's family and with those with whom she worked most closely. Stirring, immersive, and authoritative, Walk with Me does justice to Fannie Lou Hamer's life, capturing in full the spirit, and the voice, that led the fight for freedom and equality in America at its critical moment.

"This biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, the civil-rights advocate who challenged Mississippi segregationists with her powerful oratory and 'unforgettable' singing, places grassroots organizing by women at the heart of the battle for Black enfranchisement."—The New Yorker

©2021 Kate Clifford Larson (P)2021 Recorded Books

Walk with Me

I have never read a book where I had to stop and take a couple of days break to emotional absorb and reflect what I had just read. After reading Chapter 6, I was numb. The horrific beating and rape of Fannie Lou Hamer, at the hands of the police, for attempting to integrate a train station. The book definitely shows the struggle and fight against racism that our African-American citizens faced in the South. It shows their fight to gain Voting Rights and the challenges and huddles they faced to register and vote in a racist society.

My Shero!

Ms. Fannie Lou Hammer is an underrated civil rights leader that deserves all of the accolades she was given because she was a Black woman! I just adore her. She went through hell from everyone including her no good philandering husband! She deserved better! No wonder she died young!

the more things stay the same

Informative and insightful with new descriptions and views of many of the headliners during the time of the çivil rights activities. Reliving the mistreatment of Black people, the cruel actions allowed, supported and unpunished based on skin color is just as painful today. This country will never learn. Man's inhumanity withstands the test of time. Everybody ought to know.

A Giant of our Time

Fannie Lou Is so much a part of all of us who struggle to make life better for others!
Simply the best!!!

Amazing woman during very difficult times

Hamer's life is exemplary, and this biography, which is beautifullyread, is both inspiring and fantastic. We can all learn from Fannie Lou Hamer's life story what it is to be a brave American.