Voice of Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford

Hamer’s determination, perseverance, and unwavering resolve come through on every page.

Hamer’s quotes appear frequently in Weatherford’s free-verse poetry, giving readers a sense of how and what she spoke: “Black people work so hard, and we ain’t got nothin’ / to show for it.” The author also includes painful truths, describing the “night riders’ ” pursuit of Hamer after she attempted to register to vote and a brutal beating at the hands of police following her arrest, from which she suffered lifetime injuries. This expansive, richly illustrated biography about the “voice of the civil rights movement” recounts Hamer’s humble and poverty-stricken beginnings in 1917 as the 20th child of Mississippi sharecroppers through her struggle to fight for the rights of black people on local, regional, and national levels. Fannie Lou Hamer? They will likely come up short. A welcome addition to civil rights literature for children.Īsk American children to recall a book on Martin Luther King Jr.