Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America

Name: Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America
Author: Keisha N. Blain
ISBN: 9780807061527

Keisha N. Blain

awards won

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Keisha N. Blain

awards won

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#2698 of 3,809 books · #970 in Biography & Memoir

Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography (2021).

Until I Am Free won the National Book Critics Circle 2021 Biography Finalist award and was a 53rd NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work - Biography/Autobiography. Explores the Black activist's ideas and political strategies, highlighting their relevance for tackling modern social issues including voter suppression, police violence, and economic inequality. A blend of social commentary, biography, and intellectual history, Until I Am Free is a manifesto for anyone committed to social justice. The book challenges us to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual of the civil rights movement as we grapple with contemporary concerns around race, inequality, and social justice. Keisha N. Blain situates Fannie Lou Hamer as a key political thinker alongside leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks and demonstrates how her ideas remain salient for a new generation of activists committed to dismantling systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe. Despite her limited material resources and the myriad challenges she endured as a Black woman living in poverty in Mississippi, Hamer committed herself to making a difference in the lives of others. She refused to be sidelined in the movement and refused to be intimidated by those of higher social status and with better jobs and education. In these pages, Hamer's words and ideas take center stage, allowing us all to hear the activist's voice and deeply engage her words, as though we had the privilege to sit right beside her. More than 40 years since Hamer's death in 1977, her words still speak truth to power, laying bare the faults in American society and offering valuable insights on how we might yet continue the fight to help the nation live up to its core ideals of "equality and justice for all." Includes a photo insert featuring Hamer at civil rights marches, participating in the Democratic National Convention, testifying before Congress, and more.

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