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This is a speech that Dr. Luther King did in 1963, during the time of the Civil Rights Movement, his perspective was focused on the black community. In this speech he explains that he believes in a bright future for the black community, there's hope for them and specially justice and equality. He was speaking to all the audience that were seeing him, but also to the whole black comunnity. This source would be important because it was made during the time of the Civil Rights Movement, and because the message inspired to the people of that time to believe and had hope.

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This is a photo of Ernest Wither from the collection of "I AM A MAN: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1960–1970"

"The collection displays a wide range of photographs taken by amateurs, local photojournalists, and internationally known photographers. Together, they provide a vivid visual story of the evolution of the civil rights movement and shed light on the movement’s integration in the daily living in the American South." (Alliance, Mid-America Arts, "I AM A MAN: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement")

The perspective of Ernest is being part of the Civil Rights Movement, the point of taking pictures is to capture the moment inself, so he was trying to capture some of the moments of this important movement.

In this photo we can see that the audience is the people that get to see the photo and the photographers that are part of the collection, with the purpose of expand the people that get to see the colection and to capture the moments.

Is important because of the thing that I had already said a lot of times, because it captures a moment.

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This is a speech that Dr. Luther king did too! This one was made in 1958, also during the time of the Civil Rights Movement, his perspective was focused on the right of vote for the black community.

This speech has a base that is focused on the fact that American people had already fight for their rights but hadn't included black people on it, Dr. Martin says that woman had fight in a very strong way for their rights until they made it, so he thinks they should do the same thing. He's speaking to all the black community but also the whole American community.

Is very important because it's a start of the actions that black people made for having the rights they deserved.

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This a photo of Bruce Davidson, titulated "A young African American man with the word "VOTE" on his forehead during the Selma March", made in Alabama, USA in 1965.

The perspective of this photo is focused on retrating the ways that black community used to do to protest of their rights, I would say it's important to mark the fact that the ways were pacific.

The audience of this picture would be all the people that can see this picture and the purpose would be capture the moment and the ways that black people used to protest.

This picture is important because it retrates the pain that they used to had and the things they used to do to get noticed and to have basic things.

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This is a speech that Fannie Loy Hamer did after horrible things happen to her because of doing daylife actions... just because she was black. The purpose of her speech was to write down and let a evidence of the things that happen to her and to evidence the fact that black people couldn't make normal things because of the fear of being punched or even killed. Her perspective is focused on the victim and the fear of them.

She's speaking to all the American community to stop doing this horrible things and to let the evidence of it. Is very important because it lets a mark on the American actions and it's a crucial evidence.

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Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention

Atlantic City, New Jersey - August 22, 1964

Fannie Lou Hamer's life took a dramatic turn the day she showed up for a mass meeting to learn about voting. It was August 1962 and Hamer, who was forty-four years old, wasn't even sure what a "mass meeting" was. "I was just curious to go, so I did," she said. ¹ The meeting was organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Hamer was told something she'd never heard before: black people had the right to vote.

One of twenty children born to a family of sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta, Hamer grew up picking cotton and cutting corn and attended school through the sixth grade. She married a fellow sharecropper and the two scratched out a living doing hard, menial work on a plantation near Ruleville, Mississippi.

According to biographer Sina Dubovoy, when Hamer heard SNCC's presentation, she asked herself, "What did she really have? Not even security." A lynching in a nearby town in 1904 had terrorized blacks then, and the ever-present KKK still kept them quiet. As Dubovoy notes, "The Mississippi Delta was the world's most oppressive place to live if you were black." ² Hamer decided on the spot to register to vote. On August 31, 1962, she boarded a bus to Indianola with seventeen others to try to register to vote. The next day she was kicked off the plantation where she had lived and worked for eighteen years. Her husband lost his job, too.

Hamer immediately went to work as a field organizer for SNCC. Returning home from a training workshop in June 1963, Hamer's bus was intercepted by policemen. She and two others were taken to jail in Winona, Mississippi, and mercilessly beaten. Hamer suffered permanent damage to her kidneys. After recovering from her injuries, she traveled across the U.S. telling her story. With her genuine, plainspoken style, Hamer raised more money for SNCC than any other member.

In 1964, with the support of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), Hamer ran for Congress. The incumbent was a white man who had been elected to office twelve times. In an interview with the Nation, Hamer said, "I'm showing the people that a Negro can run for office." The reporter observed: "Her deep, powerful voice shakes the air as she sits on the porch or inside, talking to friends, relatives and neighbors who drop by on the one day each week when she is not campaigning. Whatever she is talking about soon becomes an impassioned plea for a change in the system that exploits the Delta Negroes. 'All my life I've been sick and tired,' she shakes her head. 'Now I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.'" ³

SNCC had formed the MFDP to expand black voter registration and challenge the legitimacy of the state's all-white Democratic Party. MFDP members arrived at the 1964 Democratic National Convention intent on unseating the official Mississippi delegation or, failing that, getting seated with them. On August 22, 1964, Hamer appeared before the convention's credentials committee and told her story about trying to register to vote in Mississippi. Threatened by the MFDP's presence at the convention, President Lyndon Johnson quickly preempted Hamer's televised testimony with an impromptu press conference. But later that night, Hamer's story was broadcast on all the major networks.

Support came pouring in for the MFDP from across the nation. ⁴ But the MFDP's bid to win a seat at the Atlantic City convention still failed. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago four years later the MFDP succeeded. On that occasion, Dubovoy recounts, "Hamer received a thunderous standing ovation when she became the first African American to take her rightful seat as an official delegate at a national-party convention since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, and the first woman ever from Mississippi." ⁵

Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.

It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.

We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.

After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register.

After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. Before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know - did Pap tell you what I said?"

And I said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "Well I mean that." He said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." Said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," said, "you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi."

And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself."

I had to leave that same night.

On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.

And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people - to use the restaurant - two of the people wanted to use the washroom.

The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."

I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too.

As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the five people in a highway patrolman's car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the five workers was in and said, "Get that one there." When I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.

I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'yes, sir,' nigger? Can you say 'yes, sir'?"

And they would say other horrible names.

She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"

"So, well, say it."

She said, "I don't know you well enough."

They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.

And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, "We are going to check this."

They left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."

I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.

The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face.

I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.

After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.

The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit on my feet - to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.

One white man - my dress had worked up high - he walked over and pulled my dress - I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.

I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.

All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Thank you.

Back to Say It Plain

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Testimony Before the Credentials Committee by Fannie Lou Hamer | Say It Plain

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American RadioWorks is the national documentary unit of American Public Media. ARW is public radio's largest documentary production unit; it creates documentaries, series projects, and investigative reports for the public radio system and the Internet. ARW is based at St. Paul, Minnesota, with staff journalists in Washington, D.C., Duluth, M.N., San Francisco, C.A., and Durham, N.C.

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Bibliography:

Alliance, Mid-America Arts. “I Am a Man: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1960–1970.” EUSA, MID-AMERICA ARTS ALLIANCE, 11 Apr. 2025, eusa.org/exhibition/i-am-a-man/. Accessed 05 May 2025.

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This book called "Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism" by John Hoberman, is a book that talks about the effects that the racism had and have in medical investigations and sources, it's focused on how this kind of thinking affects the treatment of their black patients.

We can interpret the audicience as the people who get to read this book, but also to all the meds who want to know more about this topic.

It's very important because it can be used as a source of information for the people that are in charge of the health of the black people.

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Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.

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This is a book called "Representing the Race The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer" by Mack, Kenneth W made it in 2012.

"In this book he tells the story of an enduring paradox of American race relations, through the prism of a collective biography of African American lawyers who worked in the era of segregation." (Kenneth, Representing the Race The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer)

His perspective is focused on the race relations and the audience is the people who read his book.

This source is important because it can be read in a more natural way, why do I mean with this? Is the fact that it's a story and not an investigation inself, which makes it more comfortable to read it.

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This is a book called "Worse Than Slavery:
Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice" by David M. Oshinsky. It tells the horrifying things that used to happen, as the title said, worse than slavery. His perspective is focused on the black suffering and the actions inself that provoque this pain. His audience is the people that read this book to informate themselfs of the terrible things that happened. Is very important because it tells a reality and a part of the things that the black community had to suffer.

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This is a dissertation called "Jim Crow's Legacy: Segregation stress syndrome" made by Ruth.K Thompson. It tells the phychologic impact on the African people that lived during the Jim Crow's legacy, it is focused on the stress, anxiety, depression, fear and humiliation experienced by near 100 African people. The perspective of the author is focused on the African people, he tries to analyze the impact that the things that they lived done to their minds. The audience is the people who get to listen his dissertation and the people who can read it. Is very important because it analyzes the behavement and consequences of the horrible things they used to live.

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This is a book called "Saving the Soul of Georgia, Donald L. Hollowell and the Struggle for Civil Rights" made by Maurice C. Daniels. It talks about the effort and actions that Donald did to protect his community (Daniels, Maurice C., and Vernon E. Jordan. “Saving the Soul of Georgia.”). The perspective is focused on the history of him and the consequences of his actions and the audicience is principally focused on the black community but also in all the people that could read the book. Is important because it talks about an important person who made things to help his community and actually help a lot.

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Bibliography:

Kenneth, Mack. “ Representing the Race The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer.” Discover.Khm.De, 2012, discover.khm.de/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma990369090700206441&context=L&vid=49HBZ_KHM%3AVU1&lang=de&search_scope=MyInstitution&adaptor=Local+Search+Engine&tab=LibraryCatalog&query=any%2Ccontains%2CCivil+rights+movements+%2F+United+States+%2F+History+%2F+20th+century%2CAND&mode=advanced&offset=0. Accessed 05 May 2025.

Daniels, Maurice C., and Vernon E. Jordan. “Saving the Soul of Georgia.” Georgia Press, 4 July 2024, ugapress.org/book/9780820349817/saving-the-soul-of-georgia/. Accessed 05 May 2025.

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My sources helped reconstruct the Civil Rights Movement because it contains some of the most important people that are recognized for helping this movement to expand and develop. Also, the moments that are related to this movement in the different sources I used are also iconic moments. We can say that all of the pictures, books, and stuff I’d put on this web are very important, doesn’t matter if they’re primary or secondary source. I would say the things that contribute a lot are the speeches, because they help us understand the way that people get to feel at that time with all the injustices and terrible things they experienced. I think an opinion and experience makes the speech more connected to the whole situation.

The pictures that I have chosen also to make a lot of difference and help us understand the ambience and people of that time, the faces, the cartels, the cars, and all those kinds of things help us to empathize more with them and with the things that they, sadly, must go through. Even though books are, in some cases, very long and maybe difficult to read, they are very important, because they help us to focused more on the actions that happen and on the development of the movement.