11. Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic National Convention
In 1964, the president of the United States felt so threatened by a poor, middle-aged black woman from Mississippi that he called a bullshit press conference to keep her off of television. That’s the story of Fannie Lou Hamer at the Democratic National Convention, which was hosting a lily-white delegation from Mississippi that opposed civil rights. Hamer’s Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party aimed to unseat them, and she was invited to testify on TV about the problems she faced. Johnson was struggling to keep Southern voters from supporting his opponent, Barry Goldwater, so he called a pointless press conference to keep Hamer’s testimony off TV. (He wasn’t successful.) The story has an irresistible combination of an unexpected hero thrust into political intrigue, famous black activists (Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, John Lewis), powerful Democratic leaders (LBJ, Bobby Kennedy), and a betrayal of civil rights ideals for short-sighted party politics. But at its core, it’s simple: A humble woman took on the president in the court of public opinion and, at worst, fought to a draw. [Rowan Kaiser]