A Message We Must Hear: In Until I Am Free, a wonderful and timely new book on the life of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, author Keisha N. Blain deftly portrays Hamer as a thoughtful and prescient political activist whose message for todays racial justice movements is as powerful as it was more than a half-century ago.

• Author: Stockwell, Norman

In the book's introduction, Blain recounts her own first exposure to Hamer when she was a senior in college: "I was blown away by what I read and couldn't help wondering why it had taken me so long to encounter this fearless and extraordinary Black woman. The more I learned about Hamer's life and her political vision, however, it became clear to me why she hadn't received the same level of attention and acclaim as so many others: She didn't reflect the public's memory of the civil rights movement."

After a biographical chapter on Hamer's early life, Blain launches into a series of chapters that each include a story from recent years. For instance, chapter two begins with the story of Sandra Bland, a twenty-eight-year-old Black woman who died in police custody in Texas after a routine traffic stop. This leads into a description of Hamer's own beating by Mississippi police in 1963, a story that Hamer related to a live television audience during the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

"In Hamer's view, public testimony was one powerful response to challenge this system," Blain explains. "By telling her story, repeatedly, Hamer hoped to empower others and to send the message that silence when confronting everyday degradation and violence was simply not an option."

Hamer first got involved in the civil rights movement in 1962, at age forty-four, when she heard James Forman speak on voting rights. She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in August of that year and began organizing for the right of her neighbors to vote in her home state of Mississippi. She was evicted from her house by WD. Marlow, the white plantation owner for whom she worked, when he learned that she had registered to vote. Hamer moved on and never turned back.

Hamer is perhaps best remembered for the phrase "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired," first...