I relied on close friends and colleagues to help me write through it.

But I had to honor Hamer the other women and men who endured unspeakable horror by telling the truth. I knew what happened and I had to find a way to get readers to hear, see, smell, and feel what happened. In the end, I could not be completely objective. I had to keep my historian hat on and be objective. It was a brutal and painful process, but I was far removed from it, and I could walk away and take a break now and then. I pored through all the FBI, Department of Justice, and trial records, as well as dozens of interviews to get a clear picture of what happened. That chapter was extremely difficult to research and write. That chapter is particularly difficult to read. There is searing anger and pain on the pages in this book, particularly regarding the abuse Hamer faced by police after her arrest in Mississippi. I am so glad I listened to my voice, Hamer, and my agent! What a personal and professional journey it has been researching and writing about her life. When I discussed the idea of this biography with my literary agent, I told her I thought I was ready, and she agreed. Hamer was still there, sort of waiting in my mind. But over time, my interests and scholarship expanded into the 20th century. My strength at the time was 19th-century African American and women’s history. I think I wasn’t ready, professionally, to take on Fannie Lou Hamer. After my book on Tubman came out (now almost 20 years ago), I kept thinking about Hamer, but other book projects floated to the top. I researched and wrote my dissertation on Harriet Tubman, another great American freedom fighter. in history at the University of New Hampshire. She stayed with me, in a sense, through my studies there and when I went on to earn my Ph.D. I learned about Hamer more than 25 years ago when I enrolled in a master’s degree program in gender studies at Simmons University here in Boston.

That is a great question! I think a little of both. It came out earlier this month.ĭid you choose your subject or did your subject choose you? Her new book, Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, chronicles the life of a trailblazing civil-rights icon. Historian Kate Clifford Larson is also the New York Times bestselling author of several biographies, including Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero and The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln.

Walk with me fannie lou hamer