MULE TRAIN
“I got to the point where I felt like it was a duty of every citizen, every human being, to play a role in making sure everybody’s rights are guaranteed…. Who knows what’s going to happen when you face an unknown. You’re in a segregated environment, a segregated town like Marks, Mississippi, and now you’re going to walk a highway all the way to Washington, D. C. I mean you have to go on faith and belief and hope.”
–John Morris
“I was trying to be the first one on the first (bus). I was in line, trying to get there. I was just so excited about going because we had such a terrible living.”
–Dafphine M. Edwards
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“I left on the bus on the 14th of April. The Mule Train left a week or two weeks behind us. We were the first crew to go in to set up the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C.”
–Olivia Jamison
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Photographs by Dr. James Goldman. Many of his photographs documenting the Mule Train appear in Goldman's Gold, a book he published with Macklyn Hubbell.
Rally at Marks, MS, 1968, Ernest Withers, 1968
Courtesy The Withers Collection
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached at the funeral of Mr. Armstead Phipps in June 1966
50th Anniversary of the Mule Train
Conner Kennedy, 2nd from left and Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy, 2nd from right- grandchildren of Robert F. Kennedy.
Oxford author Ellen Meacham, third from right, visits with the then children who brought their grandfather who helped to secure programs for the poor people of the South.
The 50th Anniversary of The Mule Train was held on the same weekend as when the original train left in 1968.
Martin Luther King III arriving at Valley Queen Church, where his father preached the funeral of Mr. Armstead Phipps who died participating in the march for the Poor People's Campaign.
