We continue our look at Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC) in the 1970s in Sunflower County, Mississippi, As the FFC and its antipoverty programs grew so did its debt to banks. By 1970 it owned 640 acres of highly leveraged land and had the third-largest payroll in Sunflower County. FFC took on additional debt to finance machines for the farm, tools for a farm tool lending operation, a head start program, garment factory, and low-income housing initiative. The FFC built low-income homes and then sold them using low interest loans to homeowners many of them first-time homebuyers that needed training on how to own and maintain a home. FFC programs temporarily gave the impression of meeting the needs of poor people in Sunflower County and giving them dignity and economic independence.