Maybe I'm Wrong

When the freedom riders came to Mississippi in 1961, Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper who *did not know* Black folks had ANY legal right to vote. She and the people “like her” still on legacy plantations in MS were told as much. But oh, when that hidden away, remarkable, intelligent, soon to be incredible speaker became aware, she also became one of the most important voices to ensure all of Mississippi, and then the US, learned what she learned, and she is my favorite, most inspiring, most beloved of all the civil rights giants, that farm girl from Mississippi, that I too l, like a lot of yall, get a lump in my throat thinking of tonight. The spirit of that woman, and the ones that came in between she and Senator elect Scott Colom today, make me proud to be a southerner, and because of them, I am grateful.