Chana Kai Lee. For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Women in American History Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. ix + 255 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-252-06936-9.

Reviewed by Kate Wittenstein

Published on H-SAWH (June, 2001)

Fannie Lou Hamer: To 1964 and Beyond disability insurance was insufcient. Friends and In For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou family donated clothing and food. In 1977 she suf‐ Hamer, Chana Kai Lee makes extensive use of fered from depression and breast cancer that re‐ personal interviews, oral histories, and manu‐ sulted in a mastectomy. She "stufed socks into her script collections, including the Fannie Lou clothing" because she could not aford a prosthe‐ Hamer papers and the Student Non-Violent Coor‐ sis. Hamer confded this to her good friend dinating Committee (SNCC) papers, to rescue Eleanor Holmes Norton, who helped her purchase Hamer (1917-1977) from constructions that one (p. 176). present her largely in terms of her iconic and Those were the last years of the woman who, symbolic role within the civil rights movement of as an elected delegate of the Mississippi Freedom the 1960s. According to Lee, Hamer was not sim‐ Democratic Party (MFDP), stunned and captivated ply a strong black woman who met all threats and the 1964 Democratic National Convention and the challenges with determination and fearlessness. nation with her graphic description of life for Her reality was more complex. poor blacks in the Mississippi Delta and the vio‐ In For Freedom's Sake, Hamer's story is not lence and intimidation they met when attempting one of "complete triumph over all odds or com‐ to register to vote. Lee's point is that to appreciate plete victimization." Her successes and rewards fully Fannie Lou Hamer's life and "the meaning of often brought "enormous personal pain, disap‐ Hamer's life for Hamer," we need to recognize pointment, and exhaustion." During the last years both the personal difculties and public successes of her life, Lee tells us, Hamer "was left virtually she experienced (p.180). They are equally impor‐ alone to assess the consequences of her sacrifces tant, she argues. made in a quest for freedom" (p. xi). For example, Indeed, throughout the biography Lee suc‐ throughout the 1970s, Hamer lived with both seri‐ cessfully weaves the personal and the public to‐ ous illness and extreme fnancial hardship. Her gether to examine the roots of Hamer's activism, H-Net Reviews

Hamer's own self-constructions, and the interplay Chapter Four traces SNCC activities in the of gender, race, and class in all aspects of Hamer's Delta, the formation of the MFDP, increased local life. A brief summary of each chapter will illus‐ harassment of Hamer and her husband by the trate Lee's skill and outline the structure of the telephone company and others, and Hamer's book. emergence on the national stage as a spokesper‐ Chapter One recounts Hamer's childhood and son and fundraiser for SNCC and the MFDP young adulthood as the youngest of twenty chil‐ among northern audiences. In fact, Lee argues, dren in a family of sharecroppers and domestic SNCC became quite dependent on Hamer's mon‐ laborers in Montgomery County, Mississippi. Lee ey-raising skills. Interestingly, Lee suggests that details the factors that shaped Hamer's racial and some SNCC members were so captivated by gender identities and locates the sources of her Hamer's grassroots authenticity that they may radicalism in both personal history (the life expe‐ have had a tendency to exploit or objectify her. riences and example of her mother Lou Ella One SNCC member referred to Hamer as "a Mrs. Townsend) and political/economic experience (the Hamer." Lee argues that "the irony of Hamer's "direct link between race and access to re‐ leadership was that her very personal, down- sources") (p. 12). home style led some to impersonalize her as a type" (p. 77). There is an important discussion as Chapter Two focuses on Hamer's emergence well of Hamer's reaction to and concern about the as a leader in Sunfower County and the issue of while female volunteers of Freedom Summer (pp. gender and leadership in the civil rights move‐ 74-76). ment. Hamer criticized the traditional black male leadership. The clergy came under special attack Lee's account in Chapter Five of the MFDP at for selling out. Hamer was also conscious of the the 1964 Democratic National Convention stresses fact that class set her apart from, for example, the Hamer's refusal to compromise on the seating of leadership of the National Association for the Ad‐ the MFDP delegates and her diferences with the vancement of Colored People (NAACP). SNCC re‐ NAACP, Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King, Jr., the cruited Hamer in 1962, and she took pleasure in Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the fact that she and the students stood outside and Aaron Henry of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Lee the mainstream of civil rights leadership contends that Hamer's disillusionment with tradi‐ tional middle-class black male leaders and their In 1963, Hamer and a group of other Missis‐ white liberal counterparts reinforced her commit‐ sippians made a trip to South Carolina to partici‐ ment to local solutions to local problems. pate in voter-registration work. On the return trip, the group was arrested, jailed, and savagely In Chapter Six Lee discusses Hamer's move beaten by police in Winona, Mississippi. Hamer from the national stage to more community build‐ and others were subjected to sexual indignities as ing at the grassroots level. In the immediate after‐ well--indignities that Hamer omitted from her math of the 1964 convention, Hamer criticized the public accounts of the beatings. Lee speculates NAACP for its lack of commitment to local self-de‐ that Hamer's reticence stemmed from her aware‐ termination. Problems also surfaced between the ness that her grandmother and mother had suf‐ MFDP and its parent organization, SNCC. The or‐ fered a lifetime of sexual abuse at the hands of ganizations traded charges about local versus na‐ white men, as well as her desire to counteract tional control and the degree of radicalism in negative images of black women's sexuality. These each organization. Hamer split with SNCC and events are discussed in Chapter Three. continued to work through the MFDP to develop a

2 H-Net Reviews political agenda that focused on housing, educa‐ tant role in the civil rights movement. The biogra‐ tion, and welfare. phy goes a long way toward assuring that Hamer Lee argues throughout the biography that will avoid the popular and historical fate of So‐ Hamer worked for economic as well as political journer Truth, who for so long was treated only as rights. She makes this point most forcefully in icon, symbol, and authentic former slave in the Chapter Seven, which uncovers Hamer's role in eyes of a white audience. the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union (MFLU) for Finally, For Freedom's Sake enters into con‐ the frst time, and Chapter Eight, which covers temporary historiographical debates about the Hamer's eforts to establish a freedom farm coop‐ role of women--black and white--in the civil rights erative in the Delta region. movement, gender and leadership style in the The MFLU, the economic counterpart of the movement, the long tradition of black women's in‐ MFDP, was founded in Shaw, Mississippi, in 1965. volvement in politics--especially in the South-- Forty-fve cotton day laborers, domestic workers, from Reconstruction forward, the decentering of and tractor drivers organized to address the ex‐ Martin Luther King, Jr., and other prominent na‐ ploitation of black workers and the lack of eco‐ tional leaders in the narrative of civil rights histo‐ nomic opportunity for blacks in the Delta. Lee ry, and the ongoing reconceptualization of the makes the interesting argument that the MFLU, movement at the local and national levels. with its emphasis on self-determination and self- Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. reliance, anticipated some of the black national‐ H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of ism of the emerging black power movement. With this work for nonproft, educational purposes, her involvement in the MFLU and her efort to es‐ with full and accurate attribution to the author, tablish a self-sufcient cooperative farming enter‐ web location, date of publication, originating list, prise, Hamer "appeared to be in transition to full and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. scale anti-poverty work" (p. 143). For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews By calling attention to the economic-justice editorial staf at [email protected]. wing of the civil rights movement, these two chap‐ ters make an important contribution to move‐ ment history. That wing has a distinguished histo‐ ry in its own right, dating back at least to A. Philip Randolph's founding of the Brotherhood of Sleep‐ ing Car Porters in 1925. Subsequently, the March on Washington in 1963 was a march for jobs and freedom. Hamer's movement involvement demonstrates that she traveled from voting rights to electoral politics (she ran for ofce twice in Mississippi and lost both times) to economic jus‐ tice and self-determination within the local com‐ munity. That battle, of course, is still being waged. Lee's study makes signifcant contributions in a number of ways. To her credit, she has written a much-needed political biography that avoids sen‐ timentality and iconography with respect to Hamer's personal life, public career, and impor‐

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Citation: Kate Wittenstein. Review of Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. H-SAWH, H-Net Reviews. June, 2001.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5229

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