Your words burn into my heart and soul and fan flames I thought were banked and dying. You’re an outraged human being who happens to be a woman and God bless you for fighting for our future.

I grew up in the South during the height of the Civil Rights War. One of the vast army of women on the front lines of that struggle was Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Mississippi, who helped found and lead the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964. They challenged the credentials of white supremacist delegates at the conventions in Atlanta (1964) and Chicago (1968), asking “Is this America?”

When asked if she fought for equality, she answered, “I couldn’t tell nobody with my head up I’m fighting for equal right with a white man, because I don’t want to it. Because if what I get, got to come through lynching, mobbing, raping, murdering, stealing, and killing, I didn’t want it, because it was a shocking this game to me I couldn’t hardly sit down.”

Her fight was for liberation thru transformation, transformation of the human heart from “me alone” to “we together.” That fire you feel is turning your love diamond bright and we need that now like no other time in our history.