The Mule Train Historical Society was founded to perpetuate the memory and purpose of the 1968 Mule Train from Marks, Mississippi to Washington, DC as centerpiece of the Poor People’s Campaign. The Mule Train of 28 wagons, pulled by 56 mules departed on May 13 taking 82 displaced farmworkers from the small town of Marks to the Nation’s Capital in Washington, DC.
Residents of Quitman County where Marks serves as the county seat formed the Historical Society in 1994 to continue the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King through Education, Healthcare and Economic Development.
Using the reverberating mantra “Rising Above Circumstances” leaders have brought three levels of schools from failing to A, C, and B in recent years prior to the pandemic.
On November 12, 2021, leaders reopened the Quitman Community Hospital that had been shuttled for five years. Fittingly, on April 4, 2021, the anniversary date of Dr. King’s martyrdom, the town situated in a food desert open its first grocery store since the last one closed four years earlier. The penchant for anniversary dates includes the grand opening of the Howard D. Catchings Golf Driving Range and Putting Green on Juneteenth, 2021. Annually on the first weekend of October is the widely acclaimed Mules and Blues Festival.
The unified uplifting efforts are led by a coalition of the Quitman County Board of Supervisors, Quitman County Economic Development Authority, Marks Project, Garden Club, Mule Train Historical Society, and various other organizations. Everywhere throughout Quitman County there are men, women, boys and girls dutifully engaged in activities to up lift themselves through education.
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