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Fifty years on, the Mississippi town that sparked Dr King’s poverty fight | The Guardian

African American History, Black History ... Posted by: KOLUMN Magazine Staff

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Fifty years on, the Mississippi town that sparked Dr King’s poverty fight | The Guardian

In May 1968, Michael Jossell watched from his front yard as dozens of wagons set out from Marks, Mississippi.

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They were carrying 82 people, and heading to Washington DC. The mule train, as it became known, took several weeks to reach the capital, where the passengers – each of them black and poor – joined thousands of others in setting up camp on the Washington Mall.

Mississippi, Mississippi History, African American History, Black History, MLK, Martin Luther King Jr., KOLUMN Magazine, KOLUMN, KINDR'D Magazine, KINDR'DTens of thousands of people have spent the last six weeks holding demonstrations outside almost 40 statehouses. Photo Credit Imani Khayyam

This was the Poor People’s Campaign, a Martin Luther King-inspired effort that King envisaged as a way to draw politicians’ attention to the plight of poor people in the US – the conditions they were forced to endure, and the lack of hope that King said he had seen in people’s eyes.

This Saturday, just over 50 years after the mules pulled in to Washington DC, thousands of activists will once again assemble in the capital, for the culmination of the “second phase” of the Poor People’s Campaign that began in May as a non-violent protest.

Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian
Featured Image by Don Cravens/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
Full article @ The Guardian