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3 “I Don’t Mind My Light Shining,” Speech Delivered at a Freedom Vote Rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, Fall 1963 Of the many strategic innovations introduced in Mississippi by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Council of Federated Organizations, perhaps none was more consequential than the Freedom Vote of fall 1963. The joint creation of Allard Lowenstein and Bob Moses, the Freedom Vote was a “mock election” designed to dramatize, especially to the federal government, that disenfranchised black Mississippians would cast a ballot if given the opportunity . In addition, in order to vote for meaningful racial progress in the state, black Clarksdale pharmacist Aaron Henry and white Tougaloo College chaplain Reverend Edwin King were recruited to run as an integrated ticket for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. As the campaign gathered momentum and publicity by late October, Freedom Vote rallies were held across the state. At one such rally, held in the SNCCheadquartered town of Greenwood in the Delta, Fannie Lou Hamer delivered a brief but impassioned address to her fellow black Deltans. In this, the earliest known recording of Hamer’s speechmaking, she borrows extensively from the Old and New Testaments not only to legitimize her role of rhetorical leadership —Jesus had answered her prayer and opened a way for her to speak—but to have Scripture also function as something of a cudgel: if Mississippi blacks did not take action and vote at this defining hour, they would go “straight to hell” with their oppressors. This opening salvo in Hamer’s rhetorical ministry foreshadows many of the themes she would address during the next thirteen years: the intimidation and violence she had faced immediately upon attempting to register to vote on August 31, 1962; her brutal beating on June 9, 1963, in a Winona, Mississippi, jail; the extent to which the black church was often an insular house of hypocrisy rather than a house of meaningful political action; the relationship among poverty , race, and social justice; and always the impassioned righteousness that sprang from the unswerving knowledge that she was doing God’s will. 4 greenwood, mississippi The Mississippi Freedom Vote was a stunning success: nearly eighty thousand ballots were cast between November 2 and 4; the arrival of white Yale University undergraduates to assist in the campaign generated local, state, and national publicity; the Henry-King political ticket foreshadowed the creation six months later of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; and the influx of northern college students proved so successful that Freedom Summer of 1964 was modeled after such domestic missionary work. * * * From the fourth chapter of St. Luke beginning at the eighteenth verse: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and recover the sight to the blind, to set at liberty to them who are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Now the time have come that was Christ’s purpose on earth. And we only been getting by, by paying our way to Hell. But the time is out. When Simon [of] Cyrene was helping Christ to bear his cross up the hill, he said, “Must Jesus bear this cross alone? And all the world go free?” He said, “No, there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross for me. This consecrated cross I’ll bear, till death shall set me free. And then go home a crown to wear, for there’s a crown for me.” And it’s no easy way out. We just got to wake up and face it, folks. And if I can face the issue, you can too. You see, the thing, what’s so pitiful now about it, the men been wanting to be the boss all of these years, and the ones that ain’t up under the house is under the bed. But you see, it’s poison; it’s poison for us not to speak what we know is right. As Christ said from the seventeenth chapter of Acts and the twentysixth verse, says: “Has made of one blood all nations, for to dwell on the face of the earth.” Then it’s no different, we just have different colors. And, brother, you can believe this or not: I been sick of this system as long as I can remember. I heard some people speak of depression in the ’30s. In...

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