A Voice that Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement by Maegan Parker Brooks (review)

The black freedom struggle, variously defined, has played a constitutive role in the development of U.S. democracy. “American” citizenship formed in the crucible of race and the twisting path from property to citizen traveled by populations of African descent demonstrate both the promise and the predicament of becoming public in the United States. It is not surprising, then, that the speeches, leaders, and movements of this struggle are frequently studied in the literatures of rhetorical studies. Maegan Parker Brooks’s A Voice that Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement is a meticulously researched and thoughtfully argued contribution to this literature that foregrounds the lived conditions that motivate and shape this discursive tradition.

Brooks makes clear her guiding assumptions and contribution to the literature in the book’s introduction. The project of this book is to conduct a “rhetorical biography” of Fannie Lou Hamer, to analyze relationships between Hamer’s life experiences and the tenor and consequences of her rhetorical style and political activism. This approach allows Brooks to attend carefully to a wide selection of texts performed by Hamer but also to appreciate how Hamer herself came to function as a symbol of the politics she advocated. In this project Brooks conducts rhetorical history from the “bottom up,” foregrounding the vernacular roots of public expression and political activity and undermining the “short” view of the civil rights movement, or the coextension of the black freedom struggle with the protest and politics of the 1960s.

The book proceeds chronologically. Chapter 1 explicates the material and discursive conditions that influenced the development of Hamer’s public voice from her youth to her involvement in social movement activism in 1962. In this narrative, Hamer’s commitment to social change grew from her familial relations, her experience as a raced laborer in the rural South, and her participation in the black Baptist church. These conditions and traditions formed the foundation on which Hamer’s rhetorical style and her lifelong, fierce commitment to social justice were built.

Chapter 2 explains Hamer’s early involvement with national political organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and documents the development of her “rhetorical signature,” or the particular confluence of accents and discursive strategies in which her public, national voice would sound. In the initial years of her work with national political organizations Hamer transmuted her everyday experience with racial and economic injustice into a powerful rhetorical presence, one that often participated in a distinctly “American” form of the jeremiad.

Chapters 3 through 5 trace a relationship between Hamer’s personal life, shifts in her political contexts, and her public persona. In chapter 3 Brooks puts in dialogue Hamer’s most famous speech, her testimony at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and a lesser-known speech given weeks later. The analysis of these contrasting speeches allows Brooks to demonstrate and appreciate Hamer’s rhetorical skill, her brilliant coordination of style, situation, and purpose. Brooks’s analysis of these speeches demonstrates that during this period Hamer became known as a “plainspoken sharecropper.” Although this persona enabled Hamer to assert political authority, it also occluded that she was an astute rhetorical strategist. In chapter 4 Brooks argues that from 1964 to 1968 Hamer’s persona shifted, and a “warrior” persona emerged in and through her activism. During this period Hamer traveled to Africa, spoke about Black Power, and used her voice forcefully to advocate for racial and economic justice. Equally important, the symbolic function of Hamer’s persona continued to eclipse the complexity of her life as an advocate. Chapter 5 demonstrates how Hamer’s public persona transformed to that of a “truth-telling prophet” as the 1960s came to a close and the 1970s began. In the early years of the new decade...