Fannie Lou Hamer didn’t ask for access to power. She exposed how power worked, who it protected, and what it required to challenge it. She became a leading organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later a central figure in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP wasn’t symbolic opposition. It was a direct challenge to the legitimacy of Mississippi’s all-white Democratic delegation, which had been elected through voter suppression and terror.