Grassroots community development programs rooted in cooperative economics require financial literacy, including the dangers of debt. They also call for understanding of the obligations and benefits of cooperatives among its leaders and rank-and-file members. Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC) tried to do too much without training staff and members about how to manage money and without having a successful plan in place to produce the cash to pay for its antipoverty programs. Maegan Parker Brooks argues that FCC served as a symbol of solidarity between poor white and black Sunflower County residents and their liberation from the old white racist power structure that ran the Delta, a new dignity and a message to northern supporters that that could help themselves. However, the FFC lacked trained and experienced leaders and rank-and-file members who understood and committed to a cooperative system for producing the cash flow to bring Hamer’s vision to fruition.