A Quote by Fannie Lou Hamer

The only thing we took out was the Constitution of the State of Mississippi and the interpretation of the Constitution. We had 63,000 people registered on the Freedom Registration form. And we tried from every level to go into the regular Democratic Party medium. We tried from the precinct level. The 16th of June when they were holding precinct meetings all across the state, I was there and there was eight of us there to attend the meeting, and they had the door locked at 10 o'clock in the morning. This is what's happening in the State of Mississippi.
To strengthen the grassroots at the party - at the party unit, at the county level, at the precinct level, and then to help motivate and facilitate the local grassroots to get out there and turn out the vote and boost turn out. And then to help govern in places where we do hold city councils and state legislatures.
I was beaten by police and sat in their precinct holding cell, certain that my future was already decided. And now I will be the person in charge of that precinct, and every other precinct, because I'm going to be the mayor of the City of New York.
I was just an infant when [Fannie Lou] Hamer spoke - barley even awake in the world. But here she was, pressing the Democratic Party to refuse to recognize the all-white Mississippi delegation, because obviously there was no way Mississippi could have an all-white delegation. Black people had been kept from registering through violence and intimidation. She had experienced that violence herself and was there to speak about it and to insist the delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party be recognized instead.
The 20th of March in 1964, I went before the Secretary of State to qualify to run as an official candidate for Congress from the 2nd Congressional District, and it was easier for me to qualify to run than it was for me to pass the literacy test to be a registered voter. And we had four people to qualify and run in the June primary election be we didn't have enough Negroes registered in Mississippi.
These people in Mississippi State, they are not "down"; all they need is a chance. And I am determined to give my part not for what the Movement can do for me, but what I can do for the Movement to bring about a change in the State of Mississippi.
I am determined to get every Negro in the state of Mississippi registered.
[The Massachusetts constitution] resembles the federal Constitution of 1787 more closely than any of the other revolutionary state constitutions. It was also drawn up by a special convention, and it provided for popular ratification - practices that were followed by the drafters of the federal Constitution of 1787 and subsequent state constitution-makers.
As for my state of Mississippi, our governor, Phil Bryant, said the state could not afford the matching funds required to trigger the federal match for Medicaid expansion. We won't do it even though in 2014, the federal government would pay over $50 for every one dollar Mississippi chips in.
[My mother] tried so hard to make life easy for us. Those are the things that forced me to try to do something different and when this Movement came to Mississippi I still feel it is one of the greatest things that ever happened because only a person living in the State of Mississippi knows what it is like to suffer; knows what it is like to be hungry; knows what it is like to have no clothing to wear.
Coming from the South, I just felt you had to work just a little bit harder. It was not going to be handed to you. I’d get the letters from all the major schools but no one came out to talk to me face to face until this small, dominant black school, Mississippi State Valley University sent a coach out to me. I had a chance to talk to him and he said, ‘Hey Jerry, we’re going to be doing some great things at Mississippi Valley State University and we would love to have you there.’
The laws are, and ought to be, relative to the constitution, and not the constitution to the laws. A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each community. But laws are not to be confounded with the principles of the constitution; they are the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed against offenders.
I think there will be great leaders emerging from the State of Mississippi. The people that have the experience to know and the people not interested in letting somebody pat you on the back and tell us "I think it is right." And it is very important for us not to accept a compromise and after I got back to Mississippi, people there said it was the most important step that had been taken.
I mean a real police state just to get a token recognition of a law. It take, it took, I think, 15,000 troops and 6 million dollars to put one negro in the University of Mississippi. That's a police action, police state action.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
This is not the party of Reagan. Today the conservative movement took a backseat to liberal Democrats in the state of Mississippi.
The one thing I have wanted to stay away from is the steroids. When I had an attack two years ago in my home state of Mississippi, they put me on steroids, thinking they were doing the right thing, and I had a violent reaction.
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