Personal Testimony
of
Lloyd Gray
A native Mississippian, Lloyd Gray is a 1972 graduate of Meridian High School and earned a B.A. Degree in History from Millsaps College in 1976.
He started in journalism as a sports writer at The Meridian Star at age 16 and began his professional career as a reporter for the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville. He spent 12 years as a reporter, Capitol correspondent and managing editor for The Sun Herald in Biloxi-Gulfport, before serving as a Mississippi Assistant Secretary of State.
In March 1977, Gray received what proved to be one of the most important assignments he would ever receive, an interview with a severely ailing Fannie Lou Hamer.
It would prove to be her last.
“Memories of Mrs. Hamer’s Last Interview”
“I was a young reporter for the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi, in the fall of 1976, when my editor came to me one day with a special assignment.
“We hear Fannie Lou Hamer is pretty sick with cancer,” she said. “She may not be around much longer. If she’s willing, we need to get an interview with her before she becomes too weak or passes. We owe that to our readers, and to history.”
I knew about Mrs. Hamer, but had never met her. I had seen the riveting footage of her speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1964. I’d seen other video of her mesmerizing, prophetic speeches against the injustice she and her people had endured. I had heard and read many stories of her courage and tenacity. So I was excited about the prospect of actually sitting down and talking with her.
We were her newspaper. She was a subscriber whose Ruleville home was about 50 miles up the road from our office in Greenville. But I wasn’t sure whether she would be willing to be interviewed, given her health and her recent history of living largely out of the spotlight. Our “news peg” for the interview was a recent award for community service she had received from the Congressional Black Caucus, but the overriding purpose was to capture more of her abundant wisdom for posterity before it was too late.
I gave her a call, and when I identified myself, she readily agreed to an interview in her home.
It was a sunny October morning when I drove to Ruleville with a photographer. When we knocked on the front door of her modest brick home, one among many built by the Freedom Farms Cooperative she helped organize in the ‘60s, she was gracious and welcoming. She ushered us in to her living room bedecked with framed photographs of Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy, and Medgar Evers. We spent the next hour or so in lively conversation.
She was full of enthusiasm about the work she was doing locally to help her neighbors and friends improve their lives.
Even though she acknowledged that she tired more easily and was “not as strong as I used to be,” she seemed energized by the progress that had been made across Mississippi and the South, for which she was an important catalyst, and she was hopeful about the future.
“Now there’s always gonna be some hellcats that even the devil ain’t gonna want,” she said, “but we in the South can still bring this nation out to human decency and humane respect.”
The headline on the story I did from the interview read, “The glitter is gone, but the fight goes on.” It reflected what at the time was a fading of the 1960s civil rights movement out of the international media spotlight and a redirection to less publicized but still vital local action, epitomized by her focus on the economic and social plight of her neighbors in Ruleville and the surrounding area.
As amazed as she was at some of the changes in the South that “I didn’t believe I’d live to see,” she nevertheless emphasized that they were “not enough yet.” Nearly half a century later, she would no doubt echo those sentiments.
The interview turned out to be the last she ever gave. She died five months later.
When I heard of her death, I thought back to that day we met and it was clear that she had made every day of her life count.
She never stopped working for justice and opportunity for all people in her unique and courageous way.”
