50 years after Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign, America’s once-poorest town still struggles. The people of Marks, Mississippi, squeak by in creative ways, doing their best to help one another. That’s how it was, too, when Dr. King visited Marks in 1968. Residents say he cried after seeing shoeless black children.
“If King were alive today, he may very well still be weeping,” says Velma Benson-Wilson, a Marks native.
The town's only full-service grocery store shut its doors two years ago. The same year, the only hospital closed. Jobs evaporated when the county's several factories began closing in the 1980s and '90s as work was consolidated or moved overseas. The movie theater was shut down in the 1960s and the public pool was filled with cement by whites after desegregation.
The extreme poverty of many residents in Marks is not unique to this slice of the Delta. It can be found along South Texas, in the Navajo Nation, and the heart of Appalachia, communities where generations have resisted the pull of big cities.
In a country that prides itself on having one of the most powerful economies in the world, Marks, like many rural communities, has been left behind.