Until I Am Free

Blain backs up her trenchant analysis with extensive research and relevant quotes from her subject. The scholarly text brims with heart, and the author's affection for Hamer infuses every line. Readers will walk away both informed and inspired . . . . A highly readable, poignant study of the life and influence of a civil rights legend. -Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review [A] vivid, passionate biography. . . . the author's rightful and infectious admiration of Hamer shines through on every page. Until I Am Free is a must-have for readers interested in American history and civil rights activism. -Booklist, Starred Review As talented a storyteller and cultural critic as she is a historian, Keisha Blain has written a history of Fannie Lou Hamer that also challenges readers to look to her legacy as a guide for tackling current issues of voter suppression, state-sanctioned violence, women's inequality, and racism. -Ms. Magazine, Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest Us - 2021 Dr. Keisha Blain's beautiful prose and infectious passion for uncovering our historical roots tells Hamer's amazing life story. If America truly respected its own roots, they would see a 'Fannie Lou Hamer' defending the US Constitution to include 'We the People.' Dr. Blain unveils Hamer's leadership in this historical documentation, once again demonstrating that when Black women sit down and demand a seat on the bus or simply get let into the room, we spend the next generation demanding a seat at the table. Until I Am Free allows the reader to see a long part of the political and cultural lines from Fannie Lou Hamer to Vice President Kamala Harris. -Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee Keisha Blain brings Fannie Lou Hamer and her fight for liberation to life in the exhilarating Until I Am Free. Alight with curiosity and passion, Blain's view of Hamer is both intimate and political, exquisitely sensitive to the challenges faced by a Black woman sharecropper whose body was too often the site of white supremacist, misogynist violence, and whose revolutionary story has too rarely been framed as such. Until I Am Free corrects that omission and will be an invaluable resource for generations to come. -Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger We all know Fannie Lou Hamer, the courageous civil rights icon who survived white violence and stood up to Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democratic Party. Keisha Blain's magnificent Until I Am Free introduces us to Hamer the political thinker, the strategist and theorist, the internationalist whose expansive vision of freedom embraced the oppressed everywhere. A pathbreaking contribution to our history and a precious guide for today's activists fighting for the world Hamer envisioned. -Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination With elegant, passionate, and powerful prose, award-winning historian Keisha Blain weaves together the political and intellectual legacy of Mississippi sharecropper and visionary political leader Fannie Lou Hamer with the contemporary struggle for racial justice and human freedom. With 'boldness and radical honesty,' Hamer confronted in her own time many of the issues that Black activists are confronting today: state violence, sexism and white supremacy, political disenfranchisement, and economic exploitation. Grounded in the material conditions of her lived experience, Hamer crafted a worldview and a politics of radical inclusivity that guided her actions and inspired others. This book expands the boundaries of the Black radical political and intellectual tradition, and re-centers a voice that is too prescient to be ignored. -Barbara Ransby, author of Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Keisha Blain's insightful new book . . . leaves us yearning to live in an America guided by Hamer's unyielding commitment to justice, her full embrace of community, her creative spirit of collective problem-solving, and her unreserved love for Black people. This is a book for everyone who doesn't know the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer and for everyone who thinks they do. -Melissa Harris-Perry, author, media host, and the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair of Politics at Wake Forest University In Until I Am Free, Dr. Keisha N. Blain has written a rich, detailed, and moving portrait of a woman who was one of the most important civil rights activists in American history. In this meticulous biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, Dr. Blain puts her life and work in conversation with the world around us. In doing so, she gives the reader a profound sense of how Hamer's too-often-ignored-contributions helped shape and lay the groundwork for so much of the work that activists continue to do today. This incredibly important book provides new ways of understanding a woman who saw this country for what it was, and demanded that it be better. -Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America