One of the things I remember as a child: There was a man named Joe Pulliam. He was a great Christian man; but one time, he was living with a white family and this white family robbed him of what he earned. They didn't pay him anything. This white man gave him $150 to go to the hill, (you see, I lived in the Black Belt of Mississippi)... to get another Negro family. Joe Pulliam knew what this white man had been doing to him so he kept the $150 and didn't go.
Fannie Lou HamerNo. What would I look like fighting for equality with the white man? I don't want to go down that low. I want the true democracy that'll raise me and that white man up raise America up.
Fannie Lou HamerI used to question this for years - what did our kids actually fight for? They would go in the service and go through all of that and come right out to be drowned in a river in Mississippi. I found this hypocrisy is all over America.
Fannie Lou Hamer