A Voice That Could Stir an Army
Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement
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Narrated by:
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Kristyl Dawn Tift
About this listen
A sharecropper, a warrior, and a truth-telling prophet, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) stands as a powerful symbol not only of the 1960s Black freedom movement, but also of the enduring human struggle against oppression. A Voice That Could Stir an Army is a rhetorical biography that tells the story of Hamer's life by focusing on how she employed symbols - images, words, and even material objects such as the ballot, food, and clothing - to construct persuasive public personae, to influence audiences, and to effect social change.
Drawing upon dozens of newly recovered Hamer texts and recent interviews with Hamer's friends, family, and fellow activists, Maegan Parker Brooks moves chronologically through Hamer's life. Brooks recounts Hamer's early influences, her intersection with the Black freedom movement, and her rise to prominence at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Brooks also considers Hamer's lesser-known contributions to the fight against poverty and to feminist politics before analyzing how Hamer is remembered posthumously. The book concludes by emphasizing what remains rhetorical about Hamer's biography, using the 2012 statue and museum dedication in Hamer's hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi, to examine the larger social, political, and historiographical implications of her legacy.
©2014 University Press of Mississippi (P)2017 Redwood AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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What Truth Sounds Like
- Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America
- By: Michael Eric Dyson
- Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook exists at the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy - of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape.
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Riffing on a meeting with RFK and James Baldwin
- By Adam Shields on 06-08-18
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Faces at the Bottom of the Well
- The Permanence of Racism
- By: Derrick Bell, Michelle Alexander - foreword
- Narrated by: Brad Raymond
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, civil rights activist and legal scholar Derrick Bell uses allegory and historical example to argue that racism is an integral and permanent part of American society. African American struggles for equality are doomed to fail so long as the majority of Whites do not see their own wellbeing threatened by the status quo. Bell calls on African Americans to face up to this unhappy truth and abandon a misplaced faith in inevitable progress.
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This is a classic for a reason.
- By Adam Shields on 12-01-20
By: Derrick Bell, and others
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Mothers of Massive Resistance
- White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy
- By: Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Examining racial segregation from 1920s to the 1970s, Mothers of Massive Resistance explores the grassroots workers who maintained the system of racial segregation and Jim Crow. For decades in rural communities, in university towns, and in New South cities, white women performed myriad duties that upheld white over black: censoring textbooks, denying marriage certificates, deciding on the racial identity of their neighbors, celebrating school choice, canvassing communities for votes, and lobbying elected officials.
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commendable topic....
- By CB on 10-25-19
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Reclaiming Hope
- By: Michael Wear
- Narrated by: Stu Gray
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Before he had turned 21, Michael Wear found himself deep inside the halls of power in the Obama administration as one of the youngest-ever White House staffers. Appointed by the president in 2008 to the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and later directing faith outreach for the president's 2012 reelection campaign, Wear threw himself wholeheartedly into transforming hope into change, experiencing firsthand the highs and lows of working as a Christian in government.
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Part memoir, part political theology
- By Adam Shields on 03-23-17
By: Michael Wear
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Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy
- Oxford University Press: Pivotal Moments in US History
- By: James T. Patterson
- Narrated by: Steve Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Americans still see Brown v. Board of Education as a triumph - but was it? James T. Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African-Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits; to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision.
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The Fight Against Inequality
- By Marcus on 03-05-15
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America's Original Sin
- Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
- By: Jim Wallis
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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America's problem with race has deep roots, with the country's foundation tied to the near extermination of one race of people and the enslavement of another. Racism is truly our nation's original sin. "It's time we right this unacceptable wrong", says best-selling author and leading Christian activist Jim Wallis. Fifty years ago, Wallis was driven away from his faith by a white church that considered dealing with racism to be taboo.
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Important book, but narrator was an amateur
- By RevReader on 06-01-18
By: Jim Wallis
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My Life, My Love, My Legacy
- By: Coretta Scott King, Barbara Reynolds
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Phylicia Rashad
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The life story of Coretta Scott King - wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular 20th-century American civil rights activist - as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends. Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising Black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose.
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Inspirational memoir
- By Jean on 01-30-17
By: Coretta Scott King, and others
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Beyond the Messy Truth
- How We Came Apart, How We Come Together
- By: Van Jones
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In Beyond the Messy Truth, Jones offers a blueprint for transforming our collective anxiety into meaningful change. Tough on Donald Trump but showing respect and empathy for his supporters, Jones takes aim at the failures of both parties before and after Trump's victory. He urges both sides to abandon the politics of accusation and focus on real solutions. Calling us to a deeper patriotism, he shows us how to get down to the vital business of solving, together, some of our toughest problems.
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I never hated anyone before
- By Joanna Bugajska on 11-17-17
By: Van Jones
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Do All Lives Matter?
- The Issue We Can No Longer Ignore and Solutions We Long For
- By: Wayne Gordon, John M. Perkins
- Narrated by: Calvin Robinson
- Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The belief that all lives matter is at the heart of our founding documents - but we must admit that this conviction has never truly reflected reality in America. Movements such as Black Lives Matter have arisen in response to recent displays of violence and mistreatment, and some of us defensively answer back, "All lives matter". But do they? Really? This audiobook is an exploration of that question.
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Enlightening
- By karleen on 06-26-20
By: Wayne Gordon, and others
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The Second Coming of the KKK
- The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition
- By: Linda Gordon
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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By legitimizing bigotry and redefining so-called American values, a revived Klan in the 1920s left a toxic legacy that demands reexamination today. Boasting four to six million members, the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s dramatically challenged our preconceptions of hooded Klansmen, who through violence and lynching had established a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South.
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Necessary History
- By S. Summers on 01-29-18
By: Linda Gordon
What listeners say about A Voice That Could Stir an Army
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ja'Net
- 02-16-22
Phenomenal Book
I love Fannie Lou Hamer and this book was awesome!!! I learned so much about her life and the movement.
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- Crescent~Star
- 03-21-22
Fannie Lou Hamer
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine...
A song that would become something like an anthem, a rallying call.
"We ain't free yet.
Nobody's free until everybody's free."
The art and power of her rhetoric and speech.
If there ever was an Ancestral shrine, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer would occupy one of the most coveted spots of front and center.🖤👑💫
The bottom up approach, its nuances and significance of its orientation. This narrative begins its examination of chronicling what the author coins Hamer's rhetoric, her speeches, persona, image and symbolism. This larger than life legacy of iconic, truth telling warrior activist, her biolgraphical journey is journalistic detailed in this empowering, master narrative.
A Voice That Can Stir an Army.
"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Undeserved suffering is redemptive echoes Hamer, as ascribed in the book of Luke New Testament.
On Feminism:
"Fannie Lou Hamer wasn't a feminist, she was a humanist. She had a broader vision.
My liberation is different from yours. The same thing that caused me from being liberated, caused my Black man from being liberated.
I'm not hung up on liberating myself from
the Black man. I have a Black husband, 6'3, 240 pounds and a size 14 shoe that I don't want to be liberated from. We are here to work side by side with this Black man in trying to bring liberation to all people."
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- Anonymous User
- 10-06-22
All Encompassing
This Book goes into real detail about the important struggle for Voting Rights in America and the Warrior who rose from the ranks of the very people most deeply impacted by rampant voter suppression. The navigation through Fannie Lou Hamer's extensive political work and programs brings a better understanding to what the fight was really for and how the Civil Rights Era left some issues unsolved. This is not because the fight was stopped but how varied the issues became and where people became divided by their goals and principles. Fannie Lou Hamer fought on the principle that the human race (no matter color or socio-economic status) deserved to live comfortable and free lives, without struggling for the benefits of others while being denied the most basic rights and needs.
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- Adam Shields
- 04-27-23
A rhetorical biography of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Fannie Lou Hamer, I think, has had a minor renaissance in the public's imagination over the past few years. Kate Clifford Larson (who also has a biography of Harriet Tubman), Keisha Blain, and Maegan Parker Brooks all have new biographies of her in the last three years. There is also a children's picture book only a couple of years older. And PBS documentary of Hamer in 2022. Maybe it is more about who I am listening to and the era I tend to read about. (Jemar Tisby, who lives in the Mississippi Delta area and is a historian of the 20th century Civil Rights movement, talks about Hamer as one of his heroes).
I read Keisha Blain's short biography of Fannie Lou Hamer just over a year ago. Hamer was also a significant player in the biography of Stokley Carmichael. And many of the broader histories of the civil rights movement include discussions of Hamer's work and influence. But A Voice That Could Stir an Army is the most detailed look at her life, especially the rhetoric I have read so far. Blain's biography was intended to be a short, accessible introduction to Hamer at only 135 pages of the main text. Brooks' biography is just over 100 pages longer, and while much of the difference is a close analysis of Hamer's speeches, many details here help to round out Hamer's legacy.
I have not read a biography like A Voice That Could Stir an Army. It has traditional biographical details, but the main focus of the biography is understanding Hamer's rhetoric and how that rhetoric fits within the broader Black Freedom Movement. Hamer's participation in the civil rights movement came later than Rosa Parks or Ella Baker, although Hamer was only 3 and 14 years younger than they were.
Fannie Lou Hamer was tricked into signing an employment contract as a sharecropper at the age of six. She attended school between picking seasons; Black schools had a short school year to encourage children to work in cotton fields. At 12, she dropped out of school to help support her parents (although there was little access to high school for Black students then.) In 1944, she became the time and record keeper and soon after married her husband, Perry (Pap) Hamer. Fannie Lou was sterilized without her permission while being treated for a tumor, but they eventually adopted four children and partially raised a child from Pap's first marriage.
Hamer first heard a speech by Bob Moses of SNCC in 1962 at her local church. Moses was recruiting people to register to vote. This was Hamer's first understanding that voting was possible for her as a Black woman in Mississippi. She soon attempted to register to vote and was immediately fired from her job as a sharecropper. She attempted to register again and was forced to temporarily leave the county because of threats of violence against her and her family. It was her third attempt when she was allowed to register.
One of the details that I think many modern readers of that history will be surprised to learn is that the names of those attempting to register and who actually registered to vote were printed in local newspapers. This was very clearly intended as an intimidation tactic. Those that registered would lose their jobs and their future potential for jobs. Hamer's employer was called when she left the county courthouse on that first attempt. Her husband, who knew about the attempt, was notified of her firing and their eviction from their house before she could return from the county courthouse. Fannie Lou Hamer never again had a regular job in Sunflower County. She was hired by SNCC as a field organizer in part because there was no other work available to her.
Part of what is helpful about this biography is that Brooks traces some of the rhetorical shifts of the later civil rights era. Economics was always a part of the reality of racism. And the 1963 March on Washington was for "Jobs and Freedom." But as legal segregation was dismantled, economic issues became more salient. It was not just that you could be individually economically retaliated against for attempting to vote but also that systems existed to maintain economic control. For example, Fannie Lou Hamer was initially able to get a contract for Head Start, and that program was managed and controlled by the black community. But while the Head Start continued, local and state officials worked to make the Head Start organization a contractor that worked under a white-controlled agency instead of being an independent nonprofit. It exactly points like this that eventually gave rise to Critical Race Theory, which looked explicitly at systems, not just individual actions.
Fannie Lou Hamer is somewhat of a tragic figure, not unlike Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks spent years in desperate poverty and in fear of violent retaliation after the bus boycott. Fannie Lou Hamer died at 59 of cancer, 15 years after starting to work on voting rights. She and her husband struggled to make ends meet. She did not seek care for her cancer earlier enough because of their poverty. One of her daughters died; she was denied treatment for internal bleeding because she was Fannie Lou Hamer's daughter. Fannie and Pap then raised their children as their adopted children because their father was disabled from injuries in the Vietnam War. Fannie Lou Hamer's last remaining (grand) child died of cancer just a few weeks ago at 56 years old. The other children died at 47, 53, and 64.
Brooks paints a picture of Fannie Lou Hamer that is complex and nuanced. Hamer never wanted to be called a feminist. But as Brooks shows, her work paid attention to issues of gender and race in ways that could be considered an early version of intersectionality. She sought to help people with jobs by creating the Freedom Farm and Head Start program, but some of the management decisions (and the systems of the community as a whole) did not lead to long-term viability. Hamer pointed out issues of class both inside and outside of the Black community and was able to change national elections systems, but was not able to win any of the elections where she ran. He fought for health care for others but did not seek health care for herself early enough. As illustrated in At The Dark End of the Street, Hamer's life was an example of how sexism and sexual violence were part of the reality of Jim Crow-styled segregation and the civil rights movement.
Maegan Parker Brooks raises good questions about how Fannie Lou Hamer is often flattened in our memory of her. She is made into both a hero and an everyman persona. She is remembered for her speeches at the Democratic National Convention but less remembered for her lawsuits trying to force recognition of Black elected officials. She is remembered as a gifted speaker but is often portrayed as only speaking extemporaneously instead of working to develop her speaking skills and hone her speeches over time.
I look forward to reading another biography or two of Hamer in the future because the different retellings of her story do matter. But I strongly recommend this biography because it so clearly presents her as a figure with agency.
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