Until I Am Free

“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”

“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 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

“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