Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer

Larson (women’s studies, Brandeis Univ.; Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman) explores the life of Mississippi sharecropper and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer in this gripping new book. Like she did with her biographies of Harriet Tubman and Rosemary Kennedy, Larson uncovers new sources to tell an in-depth, revelatory narrative about Hamer, who suffered immense hardships and political violence and became, against the odds, one of the most powerful leaders of the Southern Freedom Movement. When the college students of SNCC arrived in her hometown of Ruleville to encourage local residents to register to vote, Hamer became both an activist and a target of local white supremacists and law enforcement. Larson details Hamer’s arrest on a bus trip with other activists in Winona, MS, where she was beaten so badly that she was permanently disabled, and the months-long campaign to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which led to Hamer’s famous speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Even after Hamer became an in-demand orator and ran for office in Mississippi, she was often derided by other civil rights leaders, including Roy Wilkins, and died in poverty.