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Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America Audiobook
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Explores the Black activist’s ideas and political strategies, highlighting their relevance for tackling modern social issues including voter suppression, police violence, and economic inequality.
“We have a long fight and this fight is not mine alone, but you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free.”—Fannie Lou Hamer
A blend of social commentary, biography, and intellectual history, Until I Am Free is a manifesto for anyone committed to social justice. The book challenges us to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual of the civil rights movement as we grapple with contemporary concerns around race, inequality, and social justice.
Award-winning historian and New York Times best-selling author Keisha N. Blain situates Fannie Lou Hamer as a key political thinker alongside leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks and demonstrates how her ideas remain salient for a new generation of activists committed to dismantling systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe.
Despite her limited material resources and the myriad challenges she endured as a Black woman living in poverty in Mississippi, Hamer committed herself to making a difference in the lives of others. She refused to be sidelined in the movement and refused to be intimidated by those of higher social status and with better jobs and education. In these pages, Hamer’s words and ideas take center stage, allowing us all to hear the activist’s voice and deeply engage her words, as though we had the privilege to sit right beside her.
More than 40 years since Hamer’s death in 1977, her words still speak truth to power, laying bare the faults in American society and offering valuable insights on how we might yet continue the fight to help the nation live up to its core ideals of “equality and justice for all.”
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"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
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“A rich, detailed, and moving portrait of one of the most important civil rights activists in American history.”
— Clint Smith, New York Times bestselling author -
“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 -
“[A] vivid, passionate biography…a must-have for readers interested in American history and civil rights activism.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“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.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“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.”
— Barbara Ransby, author of Making All Black Lives Matter -
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” -
Kennedy renders Hamer's voice with a nod to her Southern roots and sixth-grade education, yet Kennedy's voice also captures the dignity Hamer earned through decades of public speaking. Organized around the themes of Hamer's work--voting rights, racial justice, women's issues, and human rights--this audiobook recounts an essential period in the struggle for American equality.
— Audiofile Magazine -
Dr. Keisha Blain’s beautiful prose and infectious passion for uncovering our historical roots tell Hamer’s amazing life story. . . . 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 -
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 of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America -
A rich, detailed, and moving portrait of one of the most important civil rights activists in American history.
— Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America -
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. . . . 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
Awards
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A Publishers Weekly Pick of Best Indie Books of Fall
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A Ms. Magazine Pick of Most Anticipated Upcoming Reads of 2021
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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About Keisha N. Blain
Keisha N. Blain is a historian of the twentieth-century United States specializing in African American history, the modern African diaspora, and women’s and gender Studies. She is an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, president of the African American Intellectual History Society, and an editor for the Washington Post’s “Made by History” section. She is the author of two prize winning books, Until I Am Free and Set the World on Fire, as well as co-editor, with Ibram X. Kendi, of Four Hundred Souls.
About Tyra Kennedy
Leon Nixon is a professional actor, playwright, and filmmaker. A Los Angeles native, he has performed in short films, web series, and on stage in dramatic and comedic roles. He is also an improviser and part of the group that appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for Longest Continuous Improv Show.