This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. - book reviews

Two months before his death, Malcolm X shared Harlem's Audubon ballroom stage with a formidable individual whom he called "the country's number-one freedom-fighting woman." This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kay Mills (Dutton, $24) vividly tells why most political and social leaders who knew this daughter of the Mississippi Delta agreed with him. Mills traces Hamer's life from an impoverished childhood to her first confrontation with country voting registrars to the historic challenge of the Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention, and beyond. The twentieth and last-born of a family of sharecroppers, Fannie Lou Hamer was 44 years old and barely educated when a voter-rights activist came to town. She took up his challenge to claim first-class citizenship through the ballot and lost her job, but she gained a cause. Singing, marching, speaking and leading throughout the civil-rights struggles of the 1960's and 1970's, Hamer was a powerful source of inspiration and strength to thousands of disenfranchised Blacks and Movement workers. A true political being, Hamer was an outspoken activist, opposing the Vietnam War and working on behalf of poor Blacks and whites who suffered from hunger, poor housing and inferior health care. This overdue biography (she died of cancer in 1977 at the age of 60) proves that Hamer was indeed a woman warrior in the right place at the right time. * In her new collection, A Dark and Splendid Mass (Harlem River Press, $8, paperback), poet, educator and activist Mari Evans uses the fabric of our everyday lives in verses that echo contemporary African-American experiences. With poignant language and textured images, Evans pays tribute to brave souls such as the homeless and the elderly with enchanting, inspiring words.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Essence Communications, Inc.
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