Annie Lee Cooper was an African-American civil rights activist in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement who is best known for punching Selma Sheriff Jim Clark. By the seventh grade, Cooper dropped out of school, and moved to Kentucky to live with an older sister. In 1962, Cooper returned to Selma to care for her elderly mother. Appalled by the fact that although she had been a registered voter in Pennsylvania and Ohio she was unable to register to vote in Alabama, Cooper began to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. Her attempt to register to vote in 1963 resulted in her being fired from her job as a nurse at a rest home. In January 1965, Cooper stood in line for hours outside the Dallas County Courthouse to register to vote until Sheriff Jim Clark ordered her to vacate the premises. Clark prodded Cooper in the neck with a billy club until Cooper turned around and hit the sheriff in the jaw, knocking him down. She spent the period of her incarceration singing spirituals. Some in the sheriff's department wanted to charge her with attempted murder. Following this incident, Cooper became a registered voter in her home state.