Monday, February 20, 2023

Author Talk with Kate Clifford Larson

  • Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson
  •  Wednesday, March 8, 2023—Noon to 1:00pm
  • State Library of Massachusetts—Room 341, Massachusetts State House
  • Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/user/mastatelibrary

Celebrate International Women’s Day this year at the State Library! Join us on Wednesday, March 8, for an author talk with acclaimed historian Kate Clifford Larson, author of Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer. If you’re unable to attend this talk in person, be sure to visit our YouTube channel to watch the livestream, courtesy of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Broadcast Services.

About the book: Walk with Me is the most complete biography ever written about civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer. Born the youngest of 20 children in an impoverished sharecropping family in rural Mississippi, Hamer became one of the most important and powerful voices of the civil rights movement. Starting in the early 1960s, she worked with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to help with voter-registration drives, and she went on to become a community organizer, women's rights activist, and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She used her brutal beating at the hand of Mississippi police as the basis of her televised speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention, a speech that the mainstream party tried to contain. Meticulously researched, Walk with Me draws from recently declassified sources, including unredacted FBI and Department of Justice files, as well as interviews conducted by the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress and also the author’s own extensive interviews with Hamer’s family and contemporaries.

About the author: Dr. Kate Clifford Larson is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of three previous biographies: Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero; Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter; and The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. She also works as a consultant on projects such as feature film scripts, documentaries, public history initiatives, and museum exhibits, including award-winning consulting work for Maryland's Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State and National Historical Park, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway and All-American Road, and the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, NY. You can read more about Dr. Larson and her works on her website: http://www.katecliffordlarson.com/

This event at the State Library is free and open to all, and those who attend in person will have the opportunity to participate in a question-and-answer session with the author. Additionally, assistive listening devices will be available upon request, courtesy of the Massachusetts State House ADA Coordinator.

For more information about the State Library’s author talk series, please visit our website at https://www.mass.gov/state-library-author-talk-series


Laura Schaub
Cataloging Librarian


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