A mule train from Marks

A photo (circa June 1968) in the Marks visitor center featuring the Mule Train

We stopped in the tiny town of Marks where we learned about the 1968 mule train, during which citizens of Marks were joined by others from around the country in a journey to Washington DC to raise awareness about the deep poverty in the Mississippi Delta.

Here's how Mississippi Stories (a project which presents the documentary work of students, staff, faculty, and alumni of the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture) described the event:

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 to draw awareness to the impoverished conditions in which many Americans lived and to lobby the Federal Government for greater access to jobs and living wages. The demonstration consisted of an elaborately planned journey that began in Marks, MS – chosen for its status as the poorest town in the poorest county of the poorest state in the nation – and culminated in Washington, D.C. at a temporary campsite created on the National Mall called “Resurrection City.”

One group of demonstrators departed from Marks by bus to travel to the Capitol. A second wave of demonstrators left Marks one week later, on May 13th, 1968, and traveled to D.C. in a covered wagon caravan powered by teams of mules. For more than four weeks fifteen mule-drawn wagons ambled through the South, carrying more than one hundred participants from town to town and broadcasting the S.C.L.C. Campaign message through slogans painted on the sides of the covered wagons.

On Saturday, June 15th, 1968, the “Mule Train” entered Resurrection City in Washington, D.C., where they reunited with members of the “Freedom Train” (the 350 who had ridden the buses from Marks, MS) and about two thousand additional demonstrators.

—https://mississippistories.org/story/a-story-of-the-poor-peoples-campaign-mule-train

Outside the Marks visitor center

Learning about the 1968 Mule Train

Velma Benson-Wilson,

 Director of Discover Quitman County, inspired us with her story.

Team Witt, edified with compelling information AND free T-shirts