Walk with Me

Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake An urgent story for our times, Walk With Me hurls readers headlong into the violent and repressive context of rural Mississippi before voting was a protected right for all Americans, even as it paints a moving picture of indelible courage and breathtaking transformation. Historian Kate Larson does not withhold the excruciating details of Civil Rights era activism and backlash in this book; rather, she carefully pairs these violent accounts with the uplifting moments of song, food, faith, and resilience that characterized Fannie Lou Hamer's family and community life. Larson demonstrates once again that she is an adept biographer with an eye for the contexts and character traits that shaped ordinary people into extraordinary agents of change.

Dr. Leslie-Burl McLemore, Professor Emeritus, Jackson State University, Founding Director, Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy Kate Larson has captured the fullness and simple grandeur of the life of Fannie Lou Hamer. For the first time, Larson has shared with us the context of Hamer's struggles and triumphs as a daughter of the Mississippi Delta. This work is an intimate portrait of a life that represents the best that America has to offer.

Dr. Joyce Ladner, Mississippi Civil Rights veteran and former interim president of Howard University Kate Clifford Larson's page-turning biography of Fannie Lou Hamer takes readers on the journey of a woman born into the grinding poverty and racism of the Mississippi Delta who rose to become the voice of the unheard and the conscience of a nation. Based on prodigious research and extensive interviews with those who knew Hamer, Walk with Me is a masterpiece of historical scholarship, a layered portrait of an unlikely hero of the civil rights movement who gave her life for freedom.

Frank Smith, Jr., Mississippi Civil Rights veteran, Executive Director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Freedom Foundation and Museum, Washington, D.C. For every situation, for every generation, for all trying times, God sends forth a leader cloaked in spirit, motivated by faith, and often with the voice of an Angel. This book envelops the reader in Fannie Lou Hamer and the events that shaped her life during the revolutionary times of the 1960's Civil Rights movement. It will be of great interest to anyone fighting racial, sex and cultural bias.

Kate Clifford Larson is the author of a number of books, including Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, and, most recently, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, which was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Larson has consulted on feature film scripts, documentaries, museum exhibits, public history initiatives, and numerous publications. She is currently a Scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center.

Chapter One: Another Kind of Slavery Chapter Two: Delta Blues Chapter Three: "Mississippi Appendectomy" Chapter Four: "Silver Rights" [Civil Rights] Chapter Five: Winona Chapter Six: "They had guns; they had dogs." Chapter Seven: "No one who went to Mississippi returned the same." Chapter Eight: "Until all men are free, nobody's free." Chapter Nine: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize Chapter Ten: "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired." Chapter Eleven: "This Little Light of Mine" Author's Note Notes/Bibliography Index