Unfinished Ladder for Fannie Lou Hamer (after Puryear), visually quotes sculptor Martin Puryear’s 1996 Ladder for Booker T. Washington. His is a 36-foot wooden sculpture made from a single, curved sapling with a forced perspective ascending upward into the distance, the bottom of which is just out of the viewers’ reach. It is an aspirational structure, in that a people’s hopes can seem unattainable, nevertheless, they strive. My paper composition for Fannie Lou Hamer is missing some of the upper and lower rungs of the ladder, an allusion to the idea that Hamer, as a Black woman, was doubly disadvantaged.