Fannie Lou Hamer joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in 1962 and became a field secretary. In 1963, while returning from a SCLC citizenship training conference, she and other civil rights workers were severely beaten in Winona, Mississippi. She became one of the first black persons to register to vote in Sunflower County and ran for Congress in the Second Congressional District. In 1964, she was a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and led its challenge before the National Democratic Party credentials committee in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In 1968, she founded the Freedom Farms Corporation. In 1970, she founded the Fannie Lou Hamer Day Care Center in Ruleville, Mississippi. In 1971, she became a member of the policy council of the National Council Of Negro Women, Inc. and a member of the Women's Political Caucus. In 1974, she was named to the board of trustees of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change.