Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.
Fannie Lou HamerRead
Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off.
Interpretation
Speaking the truth can be dangerous, but standing up for one's beliefs is crucial.
This quote highlights the peril involved in expressing honest opinions, particularly in oppressive environments. Fannie Lou Hamer emphasizes that despite the risks, she is committed to pushing forward in the struggle for freedom and justice, signifying the importance of courage and resilience in the face of adversity.
In practice
This quote was mentioned during a rally advocating for civil rights.
Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.
You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.
People have got to get together and work together. I'm tired of the kind of oppression that white people have inflicted on us and are still trying to inflict.
One day, I know the struggle will change. There's got to be a change - not only for Mississippi, not only for the people in the United States, but people all over the world.
Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?
I was forced away from the plantation because I wouldn't go back and withdraw, you know, my literacy test after I had tried to take it. I wouldn't go back.
But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.
There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees, and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.
Do right and risk the consequences.
I just figured that, for me to get the best out of myself and do the right thing by myself, I really just needed to step away and find out what I really wanted to do and hopefully getting back to where my people are from and getting out bush could really re-energise me and help heal those wounds.
All of us feel, I think, that our experiences can be the worst possible thing you can go through and that we're alone in it, which is isolating and intense and insurmountable. But we can get over it.
Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it.
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