 Welcome people were waiting for people to join the room and we'll get started in in about a minute. Thanks for everybody joining today. We're going to have a really exciting, very exciting conversation. Thanks everybody for joining people are still entering the chat and we'll get started in about a minute. This is a Jeff sacks here. Thank you for joining today. We'll get started in just a few seconds now. Thank you very much everybody but we'll let people join the call connect and then we'll get started. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening to everybody. I'm Jeffrey sacks welcome to book club with Jeffrey sacks and today I'm absolutely thrilled to be in discussion with Keisha Lane. I'm an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and president of the African American Intellectual History Society, and Keisha thank you so much for being together. We're here to discuss your wonderful important new book until I am free Fannie Lou Hamers enduring message to America. So, welcome, looking forward very much to our conversation. Thank you so much for having me. Can you tell us a little bit about the origins of the book. I would suspect actually, though, all of us should know Fannie Lou Hamer. I'm rather sure that many of the people joining do not know Fannie Lou Hamer or maybe know the name, but could not place the name. I've written a wonderful account of her leadership and her life and we need to know Fannie Lou Hamer so maybe you could describe at the outset who she is and why you wrote the book. Fannie Lou Hamer was a civil rights activist. She was also a human rights activist. One of the things that I would emphasize is that when we think about black political rights in the United States. We have to think about the crucial work of someone like Fannie Lou Hamer, who really I think spoke out about the injustices that black people face and particularly spoke out against voter suppression. Fannie Lou Hamer was a disabled black woman from Mississippi. She was born in 1917. She was the youngest of 20 children grew up as a sharecropper. And, and I think all of these aspects of her life really help us to understand how she developed into this fearless activists who committed herself to improving the lives of black people certainly but really committed herself to improving the lives of all Americans. And so she's someone that I that I think every American needs to know and you know about and I'm thrilled to have written this book which, as you point out centers for life but also gives us a good sense of her ideas. Yeah, I wanted to play a little snippet of a famous episode it's really a pivotal moment in America. I'll play it and then I will be grateful if you would describe the historical context you're our historian here. This was really a central moment but I'd like people to to see Fannie Lou Hamer and to hear her voice because it's, even though this is just a tiny snippet it's it's very powerful so if I can do the tech right and share my screen properly. And, oh my, that is strange. I don't see my the part that I want to play but I'm going to find it. It's somehow not showing up. Well, I don't know if I, I don't think I have my screen shared appropriately and when I try. I don't see what I need to see. Oh, here we go. Okay, can you see that on the screen. Yes. Okay, so I hope everybody can see and hear. This is a moment that Keisha will describe for us in detail but it is at the 1964 Democratic Party nominated convention when Lyndon Johnson was to be nominated as candidate for president in in 1964 elections. And there was a battle over who would represent Mississippi and Fannie Lou Hamer is this remarkable activist came to the convention and said we the real people of Mississippi not the white supremacist should be the one to represent Mississippi We just have a few seconds of clip but you can see the power of this person in her room. And to the credentials committee. It was the 31st of August of 1962 that 18 of us traveled 26 miles to the county courthouse in in the NOLA to try to register to become first class citizen. We was met in in the NOLA was by policemen. The president. So, Keisha this is an iconic moment of American history. This woman that nobody in the nation knew before showed up at the Democratic Convention, because she had started a party in Mississippi, in which African Americans would be represented and have the right to vote. She had struggled with incredible bravery as you'll describe for us to get that right to vote, and I, it's just mesmerizing to watch her in the committee, no notes. You might imagine the first time ever for for her in a situation like this she'd be trying to read and shaking and nervous but she's sitting there. This is my street address and I am here because I represent the people of Mississippi and tell us about this moment please. Well this is as you point out such a pivotal moment. You know, in fact there's several things that that I would emphasize just because as I was listening to it again and watching it I could only think about the fact that two years standing with him or was pretty much it will be Mississippi working on the plantation, you know, as a sharecropper she was not someone who I think many people imagined would find herself in August 1964, giving this powerful speech. And when she's at this convention she's talking about the moment in August 1962 when she attempts to register to vote. It's important for people to know that this was the first time that she joined the movement it was in August 1962, the family will hammer attended a mass meeting in which she learned according to him or for the first time she learned about the right. Her constitutional right to vote as a citizen of the United States. She was amazing. Sorry to interject but you know she says she she didn't know whether to go to the meeting she said no that she decided to go and then she says, I didn't know that I had a right to vote. It opened her eyes it's really an amazing. It's, it's so true and so powerful. You know, and I think a lot of people might reflect on this in this current moment and say to themselves how is that possible. But but I think the answer lies in really understanding the Jim Crow South in particular it lies in understanding all of the strategies that white supremacists were employing to keep black people from the ballot box. We talked about things like literacy test, which of course hammer experience he she spoke about what that was like we know about the violence and an attempt to keep people from voting. And the other strategy to is limiting access to information making sure that people did not have, you know, access to the kind of information that would empower them. And just the way that it empowered family hammer and so when she learned in this mass meeting about her right to vote as a citizen of the United States. She couldn't believe it and she was so moved. She decided that she would join the movement immediately she became a field secretary. This is for you know the student non violence coordinating committee, and it became a way for her to ultimately play a role in expanding black political rights. One of the things that she decided she decided that if she did not know about these rights at the age of 44 in Mississippi she knew that that meant many other people did not know about these rights. You know, part of her effort was to get that information out to a broader public excuse me Samantha please, please mute your phone. Everybody mute the phone please. I'm so sorry, Kisha, and everybody. Please. Yeah. I think this point is important so so here you have a person who joins the movement at the age of 44. Some would argue that she's late to the game right some would, would say that you know, when when you're 44 years old joining a movement of which most of the people you're actually collaborating with are much younger than you many of them are college students. One might think that she would be uncomfortable in space you know in the space that that she would be nervous about collaborating with with these folks are or maybe she might feel, you know, a kind of way, given the fact that she's much older, and she had to listen to them and learn from them but Fannie Lou Hamer was someone who I think she was powerful she was she was humble to, and she had this this approach that she could learn from anyone. And once she obtained the information that she obtained in that meeting, she set out to let the whole world know. And, you know, the road to August 1964 was a rocky one. Fannie Lou Hamer in August of 1962 attempts to register to vote for the first time. She is stopped. She talks about the encounters with police she talks about the literature tests. There was a black woman who had a sixth grade education, and she was being asked a very specific questions about the Constitution about the state Constitution of all things. And she did not know the answers. But again, this was a strategy to block her into block others from voting. Something like 5% of the African American population was registered or even less. I mean, this was absolutely an unbelievable apartheid system that was used every means as you said every trickery, every amount of violence, every amount of disempowerment to make sure that someone like Fannie Lou Hamer would not show up to register. It makes it so amazing. And just to repeat what you said but I want to underscore it. She's, she's the 20th child of a sharecropping family grows up in incredible poverty. We'll talk later on about all of the abuses and polio victim as a as a as a young girl. Nothing stops this woman. She learned she has the right to vote and says, and just with the most straightforward, direct honesty. Okay, I have a right. I'm going to get that right. I'm a human being. That's it. Not more complicated than that. Exactly. And it was something that I think, you know, Hamer talks about this moment as both a political awakening, but also as a religious awakening, you know, one of the things that I emphasize in a book is that she was a person of faith. And she believed that it was God's will for her to join the movement. She believed that it was part of her calling to be part of this effort to shed the light on exactly all that you're pointing out, you know, to so that people would be aware of what was happening, particularly in the state of Mississippi, which was, which was not different than what was happening in other parts of the south. And and Hamer, I think one of the things that she, you know, resisted immediately was this notion that only certain people should have a voice and only certain people should be able to to serve in political office and here's where she bumped up against the Democratic Party in the state of Mississippi, a party that as you point out, they were completely fine. With having a state with an estimated 450,000 black people, and yet only 5% actually registered to vote they were okay with that. And they were okay with having an all white party that would in fact represent the state. They were okay with with not having the voices of so many residents from Mississippi, you know, heard and represented. And Fannie Lou Hamer joined forces with a number of activists to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was a direct counter a direct, you know, in direct opposition to the state Democratic Party. And they were making a case that you cannot, you absolutely cannot have a democracy and again she was going right back to thinking about the Constitution and the core ideals. And she said you cannot have a democracy, and yet not have full representation you know what is we the what what does we the people actually mean, if you have thousands hundreds of thousands of people, you know, not heard not represented. And so the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as you point out, they traveled from Mississippi to Atlantic City in August 1962, which gets us to this moment where Hamer gives a speech. And as you noted, they were there because they insisted that they should be seated. Instead of the all white Democratic Party opposite of Mississippi, because they wanted to send a message that certainly on the national level, no one should accept any kind of representation that excluded. A large segment right of the of the state population. This speech that she gave electrified the nation it's in fact this speech that catapulted her political career. As you pointed out no one knew about Mrs. Hamer until she gave the speech and in the speech she talks about voter suppression she talks about the violence she talks about the difficulties that she enjoyed. She talks about state sanctioned violence she talks about all of these ways you know all the ways of black people in Mississippi are being blocked. And she makes a demand that ultimately, if in fact, the Democratic Party on the national level if they are in fact committed to this notion of upholding a democracy if in fact they are committed to equal representation which of course, you know, they weren't they weren't just to be straight up they weren't, but but she was saying you know show. You know tell us what you really think you know tell us where your commitment shows where your commitments really lie in making the decision and so what do they offer her they offered her to symbolic seats. Before we get there, I wanted to note something that I didn't know, as I was after reading your book went to look at these clips which I would encourage people to do online. It turns out, one of the reasons why that is such a short segment is that the National Networks cut away from her remarks as she started these incredibly powerful remarks. There's Lyndon Johnson, pulled a typical Johnson maneuver. He did not want Americans to see her on national broadcast television. So he called an impromptu news conference that moment. And as she's just warming up to describe how the police pull them over for trying to register to vote. They say, oh, we have to cut away. We have a word from Washington, and there's Lyndon Johnson, and he, he babbles for a couple of minutes, everyone's amazed there's no reason for press conference known nothing. But by the time they go back to the Democratic Party Convention, she's finished. But then they play it that evening, I guess on the news. Exactly. And so his strategy did not work. I mean, and I think it's important for us to really reflect on this, think about what it means for the President of the United States to be ultimately intimidated by this black woman sharecropper to share to simply, you know, she's telling her testimony she's sharing what she has gone through. But the irony is that, you know, he understood I think the power behind that testimony he understood how it could in fact change, you know hearts and he understood how it could in fact also embarrassed the Democratic Party that it could allow people to see how black people in this case were being treated as second class citizens. And, you know, it is really telling because in the process of writing the book what I found so intriguing is I would pull all of these. You know, I would talk I would look for how people would you know describe the Democratic National Convention and in particular those were there so you know even I remember just reading all of these newspaper articles or even archival material of people who were who were at the convention without fail. Every single person would talk about that and we hammer. Yeah, it was as if nothing else happened. You know I almost remember chuckling thinking well there are other people speaking there too like other things happened at this convention but and interestingly, by the way, Martin Luther King spoke before her, but no one remembers. And you know he's, he spoke well as he always did, but she spoke so powerfully. And I love class, not fidgeting at all, and looking straight ahead and all those white faces in the room amazed, who is this person and you know what she talks about also is is astounding so many basic stories, one is of this occasion of trying to vote and then coming back to the plantation. And the other is this terrible incident when she's beaten and I wonder whether you could describe the both of those because they, they are riveting but they are also so emblematic about the United States of America in 1964. And so to the first point about the experience of returning home after trying to register to vote and coming back to the plantation. One of the most difficult things that the hammer deals with in this particular context is when she returns. The white landowner says to her you need I'm giving you an ultimatum essentially you need to withdraw your registration or you need to leave the plantation. And for people to understand that, you know, we were talking about hammer, living in poverty she was a sharecropper. She at the time was married, and her husband was also working as a sharecropper on the plantation. They were already struggling to make ends meet. So having essentially your employer say to you, your involvement in this effort for voting rights means that you're going to have to choose. You're going to have to choose. Either you're going to do this, or you're going to be able to sustain yourself and be able to take care of your family and and hammer made a very difficult decision. She walked away and said, Okay, fine, then I'll leave. And in fact what she said to this man which was incredible. Her whole livelihood. Her family depended on it everything she looked at him. She was returning after the police intervention. She looked at him and said, I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for me, because I'm a person. Unbelievable. So the guts is just incredible the straightforwardness is such a gift. The bravery is time. It's amazing actually. And it ties back to her early life to I mean I think, you know, I hope people will read the book and which I talk about, you know, her mother and you know what and so when you talk about her bravery and I think immediately about her own mother and and so all these lessons, you know, growing up in a family of people who, you know, we're struggling to make ends meet. But they understood, they understood that they needed to speak up that they needed to assert themselves at certain moments. You know, I think, like all of these lessons made a difference for Hamer and it shaped her as a person so when she has this encounter, you know, as you point out it's a dangerous thing to do. You know, this is a moment where, you know, in Mississippi but but also true across the South, you know, there's just a wave of violence when it comes to lynchings in particular. And Hamer being able to stand up to the white landowner and say, you know, I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for me was a very bold move. And, and she paid the price that you know she walked away from the plantation, not surprisingly, you know, in it really in only a matter of weeks. And then it was was turned off to right and so it led to a lot of financial instability on top of the difficulties that she was facing. But there is a point where later in life, and I always reflect on this Hamer, you know, she's talking about that painful experience you're talking about being kicked off the plantation. And she said that when she looked back, she realized that it was the most empowering moment because it set her free. And she said so here you have a landowner saying to her, Listen, you either, you know, you either walk away from this from this movement. You know, or you ultimately face the risk of not having a job. And she said, what he didn't realize is that he opened up the door for her, because what she said was okay great that I'll just do this. She walked herself fully into the movement. And, and so what he saw as blocking her and ended up being, you know, opening up the door for her. How rare, by the way, because how many of us would be crushed saying, Oh my God, it's, I can't do anything. I'm trapped, I'm lost. It's, it is remarkable I think the, the basic theme of her life is that nothing stopped her. The polio didn't stop her, the extreme poverty didn't stop her. And then these harrowing events that this hysterectomy if you could describe that because this is also this is, I would say modern America. This is, this is our times my wife time by and, and, and then this Winona incident, which she also describes in this testimony. Yes. So in 1961, one year before hemer joins the civil rights movement. She is the victim of a forced sterilization. And, you know, hammer at the time. In the years leading up to this hammer had been trying to have children and had not been successful, you know, she had experienced several miscarriages you know she and her husband pap or Perry really wanted to to start a family and, and it was so painful for them to in 1961 go through this really traumatic experience where hammer is hospitalized because she had a small uterine tumor and this was a non cancerous tumor it was, you know, this was a procedure that should have been fairly simple and hammer goes in for the procedure the white doctor who performed the procedure without himers knowledge, decided to remove himers uterus. And, as I talk about in the book that experience itself is already traumatic, you know, that's already traumatic but to add insult to injury. He doesn't tell her, he doesn't he says nothing to her. Oh my God, I didn't realize I missed that point. He didn't tell her. So she went back, you know, she's on the plantation with her loved one. She finds out through gossip because he doesn't tell her but he tells the wife of the landowner who's a relative of his so he tells other people. Oh my God. And people start talking about it and so hammer is completely stunned when she finds this out. And almost I mean it's unbelievable so she, she actually rushes back to come from the doctor to ask him like what happened, you know how could you do this to me. And the doctor refused to talk to her he refused to answer her questions. Imagine the pain, the anger that hammer felt and later on and reflecting on it she said that she knew there was nothing she could do. She felt so helpless. You know, as a black woman in Mississippi, confronting this white doctor she said she knew that, you know that she could not really take matters into her own hands and all the anger that she felt she needed to find a way to channel it into into some effort to bring about change. And she finds the answer. She finds the answer when she becomes a civil rights activist. She decides that she is going to talk about the forced realization. And so there are a lot of these moments where he shows up people think that she's coming to talk about voting rights and she does talk about voting rights she talks about the importance of the vote. And then she sort of shifts the narrative and she starts she starts talking about violence. And she starts talking about medical racism and medical violence and the violence that she endured at the hands of this white doctor that surprises a lot of people. And she's talking about this at a moment where quite frankly a lot of people didn't want to talk about it. It was uncomfortable and she insisted that she needed to tell the story because one, one of the things that people need to know is that what is not unique to Hamer. In fact it was a pattern it was a troubling pattern, whereby black and brown women impoverished women would go into the hospital. This is true, not only for Mississippi this was happening across the south it was happening all over the country I talked about in the book you know all these statistics of women who would go in for all kinds of procedures and doctors would take it upon themselves to decide who they considered fit or unfit to reproduce and they would remove they would just remove someone's uterus and Hamer pointed it out. She spoke about it, and she wanted people to know what was happening to black women or what was happening to poor women, and, and she demanded that these, you know, practices stop. So that's one example of the violence that she endured in her lifetime. And then the second point that's another pivotal moment for her is actually one year before she gives this testimony in Atlantic City, and that's 1963. In Winona, Mississippi. Hamer is traveling with a group of activists they had just organized a voters registration workshop, and they're traveling from South Carolina back home and they stopped at Winona it's a rest stop you know some folks to have to use the restroom and people want to grab a bite to eat. And yet, it ends up being this particular moment where Hamer, once again, experiences a brutal violence I mean Hamer is sitting on the bus, looking out and seeing her friend, being arrested by police officers and not knowing what's going on. She gets off of the bus, just to inquire and within minutes, a police officer starts kicking her and she's on the ground. She's arrested along with several activists and they're taken to a Winona prison cell. And in that prison cell, the beatings continue and in that prison cell not only do police officers beat her and other activists, but they force other prisoners to do the same. Hamer leaves that prison cell with a number of ailments. You know you mentioned earlier that she you know had polio as a young child so she walked with a limp, and that beating, ultimately worsened the limp. She had kidney damage, a blood clot in her eye, just a number of physical problems as well as one could imagine emotional and psychological trauma that she endured after that beating. One of the things that Hamer later reveals, she doesn't say it initially but within you know a couple of years as she's comfortable she begins to talk about the fact that there's also a sexual assault that takes place in that prison cell. These are the things that she's talking about in August 1964 before a national audience. As bold as ever sitting there telling people, this is what I went through this is what we went through. And this is what black people are facing in this country. Why, again, what is the crime that that has been committed. Oh, the crime of trying to register people to vote rights that we're supposed to have as citizens of the United States. It's quite remarkable to hear Hamer's story. And, and, and of course, unique how she told it how straightforward as she always said telling it like it is, and she wasn't going to hold back and one can imagine I can't imagine. Every one of those incidents she just carried on with even more fervor. One of your great themes and it's a theme I think of all your historiography and your view is she speaking from multiple points of view of disadvantage. And the obviously the the racial. I think discrimination is, is such an understatement or euphemism for the extraordinarily violent white supremacism of the US at that time, but also as a woman, which is not so usual, even in the civil rights movement, which is one of your main points. And a lot of the men, this was fairly patriarchal civil rights movement in a way I think it's, it's fair to say, and from the class point of view that who is this sharecropper, she doesn't even speak properly and where's her PhD and so on. So she's representing this intersectional perspective of from gender class and race in an extraordinary way, and decades before this was kind of sorted out as an understanding of these multiple kinds of representations, but you've, you've made a wonderful body of knowledge about African American women leaders throughout the modern history that have acted in this way. I wonder if you could just put her in that broader context of these remarkable women that you've been writing about. Yes. And so as you were talking I was thinking about many of the women who I wrote about in my first book said the world on fire and similarly, these are women who I talk about as women who are ultimately on the margins and as you as you just, you know, perfectly explained. It's not just that they were black women. It's not just that, you know, they were having to deal with patriarchy having to deal with sexism and all that is true. But it's, but it's also that they were working class or to be more accurate, working poor black women, often in spaces where not only white people didn't necessarily want to hear them. And more to the point, other black people didn't want to hear them either, because they didn't fit the mold. They didn't fit the mold, you know, of who certain, you know, many people thought a leader should be or what a leader should sound like what a leader should look like. You know, we have to think about the longer history, and what we talk about, you know, as a politics of respectability, which is broadly this, this notion that black people have to come up with these strategies to send a message to the people that they belong. And so how do you, how do you get other people to accept you as equal. Well, you try to show them how similar you are to them. So maybe it's demonstrated by the way you speak or the way that you carry yourself the way that you dress. So there's all this emphasis on, on formal education and, and, and, you know, presenting yourself a certain way. These are very much wrapped up in middle class elite, you know, vision. And the reality is that that's not, that's not Hemer's, you know, experience. Neither is it the experience of any of the women who I talked about in my earlier work. And so what I have done in my scholarship is try to push these women to the center to really I think replicate our collective understanding of who we consider on the one hand who we consider an intellectual. I want us to, you know, and us broadly, you know, just everyone reading the book to begin to understand that leadership doesn't just look one way to understand that sometimes the leader is in fact, the sharecropper, the disabled black woman with a sixth grade education. And to see that even though she did not have much access, she did not have much material resources, that she had a vision of the world. And more to the point she had a commitment and desire to bring about meaningful change, a love for people, all people. I think if we open up ourselves to listening to her to hearing what she has to offer us, we could in fact be transformed the same way so many others were transformed when they encountered her. And so you're absolutely right to say that, you know, in telling the story about then we came or it does fall within, you know, my broader scholarship to to center black women as activists to see how they function as organizers, you know, as thinkers. And even when we don't see them, they are doing the work. And that's the irony of this story is that you didn't you know you may not have seen Kenny Lou Hamer, but she was there and she was inspiring people and she was making such a difference. And it is truly, I think, a powerful story, and one that I'm glad I get to tell. One thing that I find amazing about history it's of course the theme that you that you live represent teach is the question who gets to tell the story. And in general, it's the victors that tell the story, it's the powerful that tell the story. American history has been told by powerful white people that have created. Not just their own view, but what is history. And so the voices that you're bringing back and featuring and making people listen to who are absolutely core to our history are not known in general because the way that the story is told, and especially from whom it's told is not exactly a balanced objective view of reality. It's told from a particular perspective. And I mentioned to you before, just before we started that COVID for me has been, you know, aside from the rounds and all the rest, a period of reading and listening to lots of audio books and, and perhaps more time for thinking and reflection that we might otherwise have had. The most amazing experience for me in this period was reading. Actually, I listened to 40 hours of the audio book of black reconstruction by w e d Du Bois. I wanted to ask you about it because you're the great expert on all of this history. But what amazed me, it's a, it was 40 hours I thought I was going to listen to 10 or 15 minutes it's the story of how Jim Crow is reasserted and how apartheid America is constructed and I think exactly what Fannie Lou Hamer is trying to end Du Bois in the 1930s is describing how it is put back into place after a civil war that supposedly freed all Americans, and that had created the second Republic that was a republic for everybody. But what so moved me, I thought I'd listen to a little bit. I was riveted for 40 straight hours because it's a work of great genius in my view. But it was one brave scholar against a whole racist academic establishment led by a professor at my university at Columbia University, Dunning, who had the Dunning School of history, who told the story that, you know, everything that happened after the civil war. There was black empowerment was awful and thank God it was corrected by, by the whites taking over again. And one person made himself heard in the 1930s and history never could be the same again, even though they tried to push him away and eventually pushed him out of the country. But he changed the way we know history, one person is incredibly brave. Absolutely. And as you were talking, there's so many parallels that one can draw to Fannie Lou Hamer because, you know, I always marvel at the fact that today we can talk about Du Bois's black reconstruction. Speaking in a very, you know, triumphant kind of way and people, people love it. And, and yet, I think about going back to reading how people responded to the book right I mean, it's so interesting how much has changed. As you pointed out, people were very upset. I mean, people critiqued the book, certainly critiqued Du Bois, and it took a while, I think, for even historians to look at the text and begin to accept that in fact, Du Bois was doing something quite extraordinary, which, you know, which was not even a miracle. I mean, in the sense that he was, he was simply telling the truth of the history. He was simply centering black people, showing the importance of black agency. He was simply pushing back against, you know, these these sort of representations of reconstruction, you know, as a failure. And, and he was using, you know, his knowledge, you know, as as a historian now emphasize that. Exactly. And Du Bois was a historian, which I always chuckle about too. But he was using all of, you know, all of these skills to to to present the history, the true history. It took so long, I think, for people to actually recognize the significance of this intervention. And imagine, imagine, so think about this, you're talking about a black man with a PhD from Harvard. I mean, Du Bois, one of the most prolific black people in history, quite frankly, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who can even compare to someone like Du Bois. Pure genius, amazing. Pure genius, right. And imagine that if he's facing those kinds of, I mean, that kind of resistance. Now imagine, Fannie Lou Hemer. Imagine Fannie Lou Hemer with a sixth grade, right. I mean, imagine Fannie Lou Hemer showing up. And actually having something to say. And saying it to people who don't think that she has a right to be speaking, not only because she's a woman, because she's a she's a poor black woman, you know, and, and, and I just, I mean, I think how much the odds were against her in that sense. And how much courage one needed to have pushed back. There's a there's a scene in the book and you probably chuckled when you read it too. As I always chuckle where Hemer is having this confrontation with Adam Clayton Powell and this is at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. I love that. Yes, I love this. I mean, it's just so amazing. And, and he's talking to Hemer, you know, he's trying to reason with her trying to get her to understand, like, you know, this is the compromise, you know, this is what we do, you know, we're experienced politicians, you know how this goes. And she's not accepting what he has to say. So he's, he's a bit puzzled, like, you know, maybe you don't know who I am. So he says, do you know who I am. And she says, yeah, I know who you are. But how many bills of cotton have you picked. How many beatings have you taken. And I just thought to myself, wow. Exactly. So amazing. You know, it's her way of saying, listen, you may very well have a title right. I know who you are. Let me tell you I am. I'm the black woman who endured all of these things. And I'm speaking on behalf of the people of Mississippi. And as much as I know you have something to say and you think I have to listen to you recognize that I bring something to the table, it's a life experience right I don't have all of these degrees I don't have much formal education but I have a life experience. And that compels me to be able to stand here and speak back to you. And I just, I think it's one of the most powerful moments that kept that really just helps us see who Hamer was as a person and it helps to see why she was so effective, because, you know, people gravitated toward her because they saw I think in her just this authentic person who just, as you said who told it like it was I mean that was one of her phrases to tell it like it is. She would tell you what's on her mind you could trust her. She didn't give you fluff she didn't just say stuff to make you feel good. And that meant that that you know when she spoke, you would in fact listen, I mean it is quite powerful. And I think, you know, as I reflect on it, I think it's truly a model for us today. I could not agree more. And it's, it's such a great gift that you've given us to be able to read her words and think about her, her life again in our present context. And I should point out that the, your book moves back and forth between her words and absolutely the current crises that we're in the current divisions that we're in. Boy, we're in more trials of police brutality right now, more murders of young blacks, completely innocent kids being gunned down and then claimed no no was an accident and so on so there's nothing more resonant. And we're in a huge debate over history, of course, you know, you're at the center of this swirling debate and I, I wonder if you could reflect for us a little bit about where we stand in this debate, I think we will, of course, what's wonderful is that these stories and the history are being told and frankly that Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans are telling the history themselves, not depending on someone else to tell the history because we saw what happened when the white Americans told the history of black Americans did not exactly come out as a very accurate rendering, but we're in this huge public debate right now, you must follow it hour to hour day to day, where do we stand on it. You know, I think a lot about a piece of advice that one of my mentors gave me several years ago I, you know, I wrote an op ed it was probably one of the first op ed that I wrote. And remember just receiving a lot of, a lot of negative feedback, a lot of pushback, a lot of pushback people are emailing me calling me, not saying very nice things and I called one of my mentors and I said you know, this is, you know this is frustrating you know what, what should I do, I'm just shocked that people are responding and she said to me, if you are not facing resistance in your work, then you're not doing anything worth resisting. And I remember thinking like okay and so what she was saying to me is listen, this is part of the process, you know you are on the right track when people are ready to stand up and block you. I mean, it's, it's quite telling to me that we are at this moment just at the very same moment that we're seeing one might say the explosion of scholarship that is, you know, as you point out centering the voices of marginalized people. Now it is being written by folks like me. And, and in fact, you know, books and articles that are being circulated widely and I think I'm certainly grateful to have a readership and an audience that I think you know other folks like me didn't have 20 years ago, 10 years ago, you know, and at the very same moment, there's all this pushback now trying to limit what information will show up in schools to see people resisting 20 Mars and work and saying maybe we should not have her books in a classroom. You know, I just, on the one hand, I'm frustrated but on the other hand, I think, okay, this is a sign that the work that we're doing is actually making an impact. It's shifting people's, you know, perspectives it's causing, I suspect, you know, students to look within and to ask the kinds of questions, you know, to their parents and maybe they didn't ask, you know, the parents might not have expected the students to ask and and a lot of people are terrified by this. A lot of people are terrified. We know that changes is always difficult. And so I'm not as much as it is frustrating. I think to myself, okay, I have, I certainly have to keep doing this work. We all have to keep, you know, doing this work, because it is important for us to know our full history period. Fannie Lou Hamer needed to know about the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment, right? She needed to know what had taken place in the 19th century. She needed to know these things because they empowered her to be able to strategize in her lifetime. We need to know about Fannie Lou Hamer. We need to know about what she endured. We need to know about this history so that it empowers us to strategize in our lifetime. And that history serves no one. You know, hiding that history doesn't change it. And so I think exactly, you know, it does, right, it just, it doesn't change it. And when Mitch McConnell, who is not much of a fan, writes to the Secretary of Education says we shouldn't teach this stuff that makes kids unpatriotic it divides our country. It's unbelievable. Actually, I mean, it's not unbelievable, but it is, it's awful. And that is the perspective. And yet, the truth is there's, of course, there's horrible things that are uncovered in the truth because we have a very part of the history that is absolutely shocking and evil. On the other hand, it uncovers glory. It uncovers bravery, diversity, fortitude, core values of human of humanity in ways even greater than we could have imagined because you read these stories and they're of Fannie Lou Hamer and they're profoundly inspiring. Her life is even more inspiring than the darkness of that is that made it possible because she's actually a symbol, not not just a symbol she's iconic for us in how to persevere in countless contexts. And so there's something so glorious about this true history that we should be absolutely regarding as the great gift now that so many voices are present giving us the true history. You're absolutely right. And I did not learn about Fannie Lou Hamer until I was a senior in college and I was majoring in history in Africana studies. I mean, think about that. That's amazing. By the way, but by the way, I am 67 and I say to my wife almost every day I cannot believe I never learned about such and such. It's constant throughout life. I didn't even know about black about Du Bois black reconstruction actually until a couple of years ago, never heard a word about it. So this is why it's so important what you're doing so important to the African American intellectual history society. So important your voice. And we have unfortunately run out of time because I have 1000 things more I want to talk with you about and we will find more time to do that. In closing, let me thank you for a wonderful book but a wonderful opening for us, not just this book but all of your writing because you're bringing incredible perspectives and important voices to the four that are profoundly enriching for us. Elaine, thank you again and everybody please read this wonderful book until I am free Fannie Lou Hamer's enduring message to America truly is enduring. Thank you so much Keisha for being with us and let me tell everybody listening that our next book club is on December 16 at 11am Eastern time. It is 4pm in Europe. It is Heather Cox Richardson another wonderful historian and author of how the South won the Civil War oligarchy democracy and the continuing fight for the soul of America we continue on the same themes with Heather Cox Richardson. Next month, Keisha blame. Thank you very much and congratulations. Thank you so much and thanks to everyone for coming.