On this day, June 27, 1967, Mrs. Hamer had organized a meeting with the National Council of Negro Women to fight poverty. The Office of Economic Opportunity, a federal program, would provide a grant for the meeting to be held in Mississippi, if it was given approval by the governor of the state. As Mrs. Hamer was associated with this meeting, and already considered “menace to society”, then-governor Paul Johnson vetoed the grant.
Undeterred, local coalitions were able to pull their resources and have the meetings go on anyway. Luminaries like Dorothy Height lead group meetings, giving the women the power of education about public assistance programs, as well as the confidence to learn that they were worth more than their circumstances.