But If You Have a Pig in Your Backyard … Nobody Can Push You Around
Following its local workshops in the late 1960s, the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) began to create self-help community programs. This chapter focuses on NCNW's programs in Mississippi--a pig bank for Fannie Lou Hamer's Sunflower County Freedom Farm; low-income home ownership (also known as Turnkey III); and childcare centers in Okolona, Ruleville, and Jackson. To fund these programs, the NCNW utilized financial support from public sources--such as the federal government--and private sources--such as foundations, businesses, and voluntary organizations. Drawing upon its new concept of grassroots expertise as well as the War on Poverty concept of "maximum feasible participation" of the poor, the NCNW recruited local civil rights women such as Fannie Lou Hamer and Unita Blackwell to lead these programs that provided black communities with much-needed food, housing, and childcare. The NCNW's efforts boosted Mississippi women's interest in the larger national organization.