In looking at Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC), inexperience among most of the people associated with FFC along with a lack of operating capital and capital reserves best explains the short-lived FFC. Not enough rank-and-file people who joined FFC or benefited from it, understood or perhaps could not understand how a cooperative functions or could help meet their needs. As result most acted in their own self-interest instead of the collective good. They failed to conceptualize the value of a properly functioning cooperative. And FFC leaders failed to create educational opportunities to teach new members the benefits of cooperatives and how to support and contribute to its operation. Lastly, FFC depended on cotton as its principal cash crop; that had been unwise because a labor-intensive handpicked cash crop could not compete with mechanized large commercial cotton production. These larger farms also benefited from receiving federal government subsidies something that FFC did not receive.