“Reminiscences and a gallery of photos documenting an unfinished journey that began thirty years ago.”

On 16 September 1997, civil rights activist Bertha Luster called me from Marks, Mississippi. I had first met Ms. Luster and her six children in 1968 on the Mule Train, part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) Poor People’s Campaign. She had located my business card in an old box of civil rights memorabilia, and I was overjoyed to hear from her that people in Marks were planning a thirtieth anniversary of the Mule Train. Of the many caravans of poor people that came to Washington, D.C., from the four corners of the United States, this was probably the most dramatic—and the only one not made up of buses, cars, and vans.