The Saying "We're Sick And Tired Of Being Sick And Tired" (with videos of Civil Rights Activist Fannie Lou Hamer & Former President Barack Obama)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post presents information about the saying "We're sick and tired of being sick and tired." 

This post showcases a YouTube video of 1960s Mississippi Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer who is widely credited as coining this saying.

This post also showcases a October 24, 2026 YouTube video of President Obama using this saying in the speech he gave in Cleveland, Ohio in support of Democratic candidates in the United States midterm election.   

The content of this post is presented for historical and socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Fannie Lou Hamer and thanks to Barack Obama for their words and for their actions.

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE SAYING "WE'RE SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED

Source #1

AI Overview

"Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer first used the phrase "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired" during her speeches and activism in 1964.

Origin and Meaning

Who said it: Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader in the civil rights movement and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

When: August and December 1964, most notably during her powerful addresses and a speech in Harlem alongside Malcolm X.

Context: Hamer used the phrase to describe the deep physical and emotional exhaustion caused by enduring generations of racial discrimination, police violence, poverty, and voter suppression in the Jim Crow South."

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Source #2
From https://blackher.us/heres-to-you-fannie-lou-hamer-we-are-all-sick-and-tired-of-being-sick-and-tired/ “Here’s to You Fannie Lou Hamer. We are All Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired.”
by Angela Dorn | Mar 12, 2018 | Articles |
"Ever since I read about her in the 1990’s, I have been a fan of Fannie Lou Hamer. Until she joined the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Fannie Lou Hamer was an ordinary black woman living a difficult life in rural Mississippi. Her birthright, as a poor, black, female Mississippian was an unfulfilling life of humiliation, pain and near indentured servitude as a sharecropper. Hamer fought all of this when she took up the mantle of activism.

According to FemBio,

“Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6, 1917, in rural Montgomery County Mississippi.  She was the twentieth child of Jim and Lou Ella Townsend. The family moved to Sunflower County when Fannie Lou was two years old, and she began working in the cotton fields at age six. Sharecroppers, her parents finally earned enough to rent land and buy mules and a car. However, the family was plunged back into poverty when a white neighbor poisoned the mules because he did not want to see the Townsend’s succeed. 

In 1944, the owner of the plantation on which the Townsend’s worked discovered that Fannie Lou could read and write, and employed her as the time and record keeper. A year later, she married a tractor driver on the plantation named Perry Hamer. The Hamers made their home in Ruleville, and Fannie Lou spent the next eighteen years as a sharecropper and plantation record keeper.

When the Civil Rights Movement came to Ruleville in 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer quickly became an active participant. With training and encouragement from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Hamer and several other local residents attempted to register to vote but were unsuccessful because they did not pass the infamous literacy tests. In retaliation for trying to register, Hamer was fired from her job, received phone threats, and was nearly a victim of gunshots fired into a friend’s home. But Hamer was not intimidated: by 1963 she was a field secretary for SNCC and after many efforts to do so successfully registered to vote.”

During the fight for the right to vote, while seeing slow (but steady) progress, Fannie Lou Hamer famously said that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”  It was a reference to her dismay at having to fight to the death for rights that were fundamental to Whites and other Americans but denied to Blacks.

Hamer was tired of battling to get more out of her life, which was structurally designed to block her from any real opportunity. It was clear that some Mississippians believed that Hamer and other Black people were born for the sole purpose of working for White field owners at low, low wages. Fannie could see that her life and the lives of her friends and family would not change until Blacks stood up and fought for themselves. Neither she nor any other Black person in Mississippi would be “handed anything” – not even basic human decency.

The tiring and brutal fight was ultimately successful. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act during the Johnson administration. 

I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

Today, I am older then Fannie Lou Hamer was when she took up the mantle of activism. Because of her and people like her, even though I am an African American woman, I have not (yet) had to demand my right to vote. Nor, have I experienced the violence of a police baton or the terror of racist shots being fired at me. For this, I am grateful.  As a Black woman, the fact that my life is not filled with violence is a historical anomaly. Still, there are many days when I wake up so sick and tired that I don’t want to get out of bed. I fear that the day ahead will be filled with nonsense – policies designed to divide us and practices that cause so much pain.

[…]

Fifty years after Fannie Lou Hamer fought for her humanity and ours, I too am sick and tired of being sick and tired. Maybe you are too.”
-snip-
This is how this article is presented online.

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SHOWCASE VIDEO - Fannie Lou Hamer "We are Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired."



Paul Richards, Sep 12, 2018

During her 1964 campaign for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Fannie Lou Hamer addressed a rally saying "We are sick and  tired of being sick and tired." A clip from "Dream Deferred" by Harvey Richards (1964)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GulApYI8MOk
-snip-
Click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIZ2a2J5v3g for a 2011 film clip in which "Mississippi civil right leader Fannie Lou Hamer tells her story in 1963. A clip from the documentary film ""We'll Never Turn Back" by Harvey Richards.  

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YOUTUBE VIDEO - Obama Campaigns in Ohio

The National Desk, October 24, 2026

Former President Obama campaigns with Ohio's Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Amy Acton, in Cleveland, Ohio.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16OhFDAnjhQ
-snip-
This saying is found around 1:10 to around 1:15 in this video.
Here's that video's transcript of that portion of that speech:
"And when you have been campaigning as long as I have been campaigning, when you've worked as many elections as I have, you can tell when an election comes along that just feels a little bit different.

[cheering]

An election where people are so ready for something new, so hungry for something better, so sick and tired of being sick and tired that everywhere you go, it feels like change is in

[cheering]

the air. And in Ohio, that's how I'm feeling right now."

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INFORMATION ABOUT FORMER PRESIDENT OBAMA'S USE OF THIS SAYING
AI Overview
"Former President Barack Obama used the phrase "sick and tired of being sick and tired" during campaign rallies ahead of the midterms to describe voters' frustrations with the current political climate.

Context of the Phrase 

• Recent Speeches: Obama used the line during campaign events in October 2026 (including stops in Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan) while stumping for Democratic candidates.

• Meaning: He applied the expression—originally made famous by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer—to characterize an electorate he says is hungry for change and exhausted by political division and the policies of the Trump • administration.

• Historical Usage: Obama has periodically invoked variations of this phrasing throughout his political career, dating back to his 2008 presidential campaign and historical addresses like the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, to highlight public weariness with stagnant progress or perceived political dysfunction."

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