Carole Boston Weatherford

"Hard as we work for nothing, there must be some way we can change things...there must be something else." ---The youngest of twenty children born to sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta, Fannie Lou Hamer grew up to become a hero of the civil rights movement. She participated in marches, sit-ins, and voter education training...efforts that earned her severe beatings by the police, jail time, and bullets shot into her home. In 1964, as a member...

The Beatitudes form the backdrop for Weatherford's free-verse poem that traces the African American journey from slavery to civil rights.