“We Haven’t Arrived Yet,”

Abstract

On January 29, 1976, Fannie Lou Hamer delivered a speech and responded to questions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in celebration of the Measure for Measure’s eleventh anniversary. This chapter reproduced Hamer’s speech, in which she described the challenge that remained before both Mississippi and the nation and chastised political figures such as the mayor of Ruleville and President Gerald R. Ford. Hamer also challenged northern blacks in the audience who “think they have arrived” and denounced the hypocrisy of the nation’s bicentennial celebrations. Furthermore, she praised the South as an exemplar of interaction between the races and offered a fresh perspective on race relations. Little more than a year after she delivered this address, Hamer was admitted to a hospital in Mound Bayou, Mississippi and passed away on March 14, 1977 at the age of fifty-nine.